Simply, it has been asserted that the fact that Tcl is 'typeless' is a
'problem', mostly for reasons of speed, and that it has some syntactic
failings (no a=1, $ to use variables, and such). Interp speed,
although theoretically significant, has not bit me in any way that I
couldn't take care of with a C binding. The lack of a=1 syntax attests
to the regularity of the languange, every evaluated 'line' begins with
a command, like 'set'.
The non Tcl packages have Tk 'ports' but it somehow seems contrived.
Perl shows its lineage of replacing /bin/sh, awk, sed, and so on. It
looks like a language of regexps, seems messy, hard to read. Python,
seemingly new in the fray, is interesting but has a wierd indention
scheme for block definitions (while, for, if, etc). Both of them seem
to suffer from many 'implied' operations and results. From a coding
standpoint, the word basis of Tcl operations, as opposed to %^@:
characters, means that the code is actually readable. Having named
commands that do operations is a GOOD thing, as opposed to relying on
non-alpha characters.
My opinion is that all of these interps are for prototyping and growth
applications that may become partially or completely compiled at some
point. Fast, easy to remeber, english coding means less time is spent
on being clever and more on the idea. Tcl seems to fit this notion more
than Perl or Python.
Opinions?
-- danj@netcom.com | Dan Janowski | :-(insert witty comment here) New York, NY |