Re: linked lists in Tcl, part II.

Peter da Silva (peter@nmti.com)
Tue, 18 Oct 1994 01:02:03 GMT

In article <ASAH.94Oct17153014@ginsberg.cs.berkeley.edu>,
Adam Sah <asah@cs.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
> The "what if" scenario I'm working under is hardly esoteric: I'm
> postulating that Tcl takes over the development of real applications,
> just like John (and Sun) wants it to. To most people knowledgeable in the
> broader context of language design and theory, Tcl has _obvious_ roots
> in Lisp and Scheme.

Of course it does.

Look, if you want people to use something other than Tcl to do the things
they're doing in Tcl, promote a better alternative. Theoretical attacks,
especially of the type you're making that are almost nonsequiters, won't
do it. Enhance STk, for example, to include more of the sort of string
operations Tcl excells in as primitives. DON'T enhance STk with language
enhancements like Lisp macros and other irrelevant spam. Do STk ports to
important platforms. Write useful applications in STk and distribute them.

THAT will be useful. Flaming about how Tcl is a less powerful language
than Scheme isn't going to help. Of course it is, but as long as it's
powerful enough for what people want to do with it it's not going away.

In the meantime I'm going to keep using Tk and Tcl because I can bring up a
useful program quicker than I can in anything else.

-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
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