Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#1

Post by blacksqr » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly
fossil.e-lehmann.de

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#2

Post by grondilu » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 10:54 PM UTC

I'm a Perl fan and as such it saddens me to see other languages targeting wasm. I've been convinced for a while that webassembly is the next big thing in computing and so far the Perl community as far as I know has shown close to no interest whatsoever.

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#3

Post by mstade » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 10:58 PM UTC

grondilu wrote: post #2

I'm a Perl fan and as such it saddens me to see other languages targeting wasm. I've been convinced for a while that webassembly is the next big thing in computing and so far the Perl community as far as I know has shown close to no interest whatsoever.

Sounds like an opportunity to step up to the plate!

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#4

Post by grondilu » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 11:02 PM UTC

mstade wrote: post #3

grondilu wrote: post #2

I'm a Perl fan and as such it saddens me to see other languages targeting wasm. I've been convinced for a while that webassembly is the next big thing in computing and so far the Perl community as far as I know has shown close to no interest whatsoever.

Sounds like an opportunity to step up to the plate!

I've tried. It's just hard, frankly. I'm just not that good a coder :(

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#5

Post by jitl » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 11:07 PM UTC

Why do people like Tcl? I've never tried diving in to using the language, but I have debugged MacPorts now and then, which is all Tcl, and I've seen that Tcl UI library used in other scripting languages.

What's the draw, other than having some existing code written in the language? Gems like the `upvar` command? (http://wiki.tcl.tk/1508)

Is there something special about Tcl that makes it a joy to use?

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#6

Post by Cyph0n » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 11:16 PM UTC

grondilu wrote: post #4

mstade wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an opportunity to step up to the plate!

I've tried. It's just hard, frankly. I'm just not that good a coder :(

Ehh I don't think so. I'm certain that you are a good coder. You just need to learn more about the techniques needed to implement a Perl to WASM compiler, and obviously, a ton of time.

You can do it man.

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#7

Post by lmm » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 11:18 PM UTC

jitl wrote: post #5

Why do people like Tcl? I've never tried diving in to using the language, but I have debugged MacPorts now and then, which is all Tcl, and I've seen that Tcl UI library used in other scripting languages. What's the draw, other than having some existing code written in the language? Gems like the `upvar` command? ( http://wiki.tcl.tk/1508 ) Is there something special about Tcl that makes it a joy to use?

It's an elegant, lightweight language, with a design thoroughly optimized for interactive use. http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html .

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#8

Post by mappu » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 11:20 PM UTC

I'd be interested to see a Tk implementation.

It would be neat if there were credible alternatives to the DOM.

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#9

Post by tyingq » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 11:28 PM UTC

jitl wrote: post #5

Why do people like Tcl? I've never tried diving in to using the language, but I have debugged MacPorts now and then, which is all Tcl, and I've seen that Tcl UI library used in other scripting languages. What's the draw, other than having some existing code written in the language? Gems like the `upvar` command? ( http://wiki.tcl.tk/1508 ) Is there something special about Tcl that makes it a joy to use?

A fair amount of the popularity was being the first scripting language with a reasonably complete, cross platform, UI widget toolkit.

It was also very easy to embed inside a C application for a user facing scripting capability.

Re: Wacl: Tcl distro customized for WebAssembly

#10

Post by tyingq » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 11:36 PM UTC

grondilu wrote: post #2

I'm a Perl fan and as such it saddens me to see other languages targeting wasm. I've been convinced for a while that webassembly is the next big thing in computing and so far the Perl community as far as I know has shown close to no interest whatsoever.

Wasm has no facility for GC, polymorphic inline cache, or direct DOM integration. They are on the roadmap, but probably far off.

So there isn't a direct path to WASM for many dynamically typed languages. Tcl can get by without all that because it's small enough to just port the whole C interpreter instead of trying to have tcl compile down to wasm. That would be very large, slow, and tricky for Perl, Python, etc.