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Tcl 9.0

tcl-lang.org

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Re: Tcl 9.0

#11

Post by breck »

For those that are new to Tcl, there's an alternate universe where Tcl is the browser language instead of Javascript:

"Interesting footnote: the founding of Netscape occurred at the same time I was deciding where to go in industry when I left Berkeley in 1994. Jim Clarke and Marc Andreessen approached me about the possibility of my joining Netscape as a founder, but I eventually decided against it (they hadn't yet decided to do Web stuff when I talked with them). This is one of the biggest "what if" moments of my career. If I had gone to Netscape, I think there's a good chance that Tcl would have become the browser language instead of JavaScript and the world would be a different place! However, in retrospect I'm not sure that Tcl would actually be a better language for the Web than JavaScript, so maybe the right thing happened."

Source: https://pldb.io/blog/JohnOusterhout.html

Re: Tcl 9.0

#12

Post by aidenn0 »

Klonoar wrote: post #8

The only time I’ve dealt with Tcl in recent memory was for some MacPorts portfile stuff. Anybody using it for something else and can speak to why you’d use it today? Genuinely curious; I don’t hate the language but can never bring myself to enjoy it either.

Tk based GUIs work across pretty much all desktop platforms and are much less resource intensive than electron and friends.

Re: Tcl 9.0

#13

Post by jamal-kumar »

Klonoar wrote: post #8

The only time I’ve dealt with Tcl in recent memory was for some MacPorts portfile stuff. Anybody using it for something else and can speak to why you’d use it today? Genuinely curious; I don’t hate the language but can never bring myself to enjoy it either.

Last use I remember seeing for it was in scripting Intel FPGAs

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/68...

Re: Tcl 9.0

#14

Post by criddell »

aidenn0 wrote: post #12
Klonoar wrote: post #8

The only time I’ve dealt with Tcl in recent memory was for some MacPorts portfile stuff. Anybody using it for something else and can speak to why you’d use it today? Genuinely curious; I don’t hate the language but can never bring myself to enjoy it either.

Tk based GUIs work across pretty much all desktop platforms and are much less resource intensive than electron and friends.

Is Electron really considered a competitor to Tk based GUIs?

In my (limited) experience, Tcl/Tk is great for basic stuff but I don't think you could do even a small part of what you can do with an html + css + javascript GUI.

Re: Tcl 9.0

#15

Post by gorgoiler »

I know of Tcl but I don’t know anything about its structure. The number one thing I ask of a language is consistency: the minimal amount of magic and most of the language implemented in itself. Ruby almost got there and then, for me, slipped up on class .

How does Tcl fare under these criteria?

Re: Tcl 9.0

#16

Post by neves »

Klonoar wrote: post #8

The only time I’ve dealt with Tcl in recent memory was for some MacPorts portfile stuff. Anybody using it for something else and can speak to why you’d use it today? Genuinely curious; I don’t hate the language but can never bring myself to enjoy it either.

When I had contact with TCL for a networking class in the 90's I already knew Python and didn't like that "everthing is a string" pathos.

For me the greatest TCL contribution was Ousterhout's dichotomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhout%27s_dichotomy or by the author himself: https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/scripting.pd...

Re: Tcl 9.0

#17

Post by vFunct »

Klonoar wrote: post #8

The only time I’ve dealt with Tcl in recent memory was for some MacPorts portfile stuff. Anybody using it for something else and can speak to why you’d use it today? Genuinely curious; I don’t hate the language but can never bring myself to enjoy it either.

It's the scripting language of the EDA industry. If you're designing computer chips, you're using TCL. Cadence and Synopsys standardized on TCL 30+ years ago.

It's strength is that you get to operate EDA tools as if they were shell script commands, like run_my_task -option_a -option_B

If you aren't designing computer chips, you have no reason to use it. It's a horrible language.

The sooner the EDA industry can get rid of TCL, the better.

Re: Tcl 9.0

#18

Post by hathawsh »

breck wrote: post #11

For those that are new to Tcl, there's an alternate universe where Tcl is the browser language instead of Javascript: "Interesting footnote: the founding of Netscape occurred at the same time I was deciding where to go in industry when I left Berkeley in 1994. Jim Clarke and Marc Andreessen approached me about the possibility of my joining Netscape as a founder, but I eventually decided against it (they hadn't yet de…

Perhaps. I think one of the main reasons JS caught on is that it had no significant baggage and the designers could take it in any direction it needed to go. Every language used by more than a few people, no matter how good it is, has some baggage. As a result, in that alternate universe, the browser scripting language landscape might have been a lot more fragmented.

Re: Tcl 9.0

#19

Post by aidenn0 »

criddell wrote: post #14
aidenn0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tk based GUIs work across pretty much all desktop platforms and are much less resource intensive than electron and friends.

Is Electron really considered a competitor to Tk based GUIs? In my (limited) experience, Tcl/Tk is great for basic stuff but I don't think you could do even a small part of what you can do with an html + css + javascript GUI.

1. Tk can do a lot more than you think

2. I have seen very basic GUIs in electron just for the cross-platform nature of it.

Re: Tcl 9.0

#20

Post by wduquette »

Klonoar wrote: post #8

The only time I’ve dealt with Tcl in recent memory was for some MacPorts portfile stuff. Anybody using it for something else and can speak to why you’d use it today? Genuinely curious; I don’t hate the language but can never bring myself to enjoy it either.

I think of Tcl as Lisp for C programmers; by which I mean, Tcl give you the metaprogramming capabilities you get with Lisp in a language that looks more like C, plays well with C, is much more straightforward than your typical shell language, and has a cross-platform GUI. A skilled Tcl programmer can do magic.

I spent ten years, from 2005 to 2015, programming almost entirely in Tcl/Tk and I loved it. Since then I mostly use it for casual scripts rather than for writing apps; but it's still my #1 choice when I need to do some scripting to automate something at the OS level.

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