I'm not a big fan of Tcl syntax, but I needed to run away from InterViews
and so Tcl/Tk was my answer; so far, I have not regretted it one bit, esp
after I found [incr Tcl] (and the fact that the documentation and help from
the net about Tcl related thingies is far superior than that for any other
language I know gives it a nice boost)
small projects: (order of < few thousand lines of code)
- core Tcl (maybe + Extended Tcl for Unix'y things) works like a charm
- Speed is reasonable, but could always be boosted by some C code.
(If speed becomes an issue, I'd use perl for that project).
large'ish projects: (order of > 10s of thousands of lines)
- core Tcl (and + Extended Tcl for Unix'y things) simply is too hard
to maintain.
- core Tcl + [incr Tcl]: works like a charm.
I have two large'ish pet projects, both of which are > 20,000 lines
of code, and the code is as readable and maintainable as its older C++
counterpart, thanks to [incr Tcl].
As far as maintainability goes, I would take Tcl + [incr Tcl] over Scheme
given the fact that most of my users/collaborators are much more prone to
learn algebraic-type language than a LISP variant.
for my own use, I'd pick whatever's available that works best -- I'm not
about to let programming fascism affect my good judgement. I'm not also
about to sit around for years waiting for the perfect tool to come along;
otherwise, I would've never learned C/C++/Perl/you-name-it.
mumit -- khan@xraylith.wisc.edu