alt Hacker Newsbest thing about TCL is easy syntax and that everything is a string :) Unique and simple and easy language with very slow changes.
Something like Python in good old days of 2.x before young internet javasceipt devs started pouring A LOT of new features to the language (feature creep).
Nowadays Python is so complex and flooded with ex C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Haskell programmers adding so many features, so fast that it's impossible to follow and understand them :(
Languages should not evolve on that rate. No time to master it :(
/rant
Replies
There's certainly something to be said for stable, uncomplicated and minimalist tooling that wont evolve out from under you and leave you with something that won't just-work five years from now.
I guess that's why Tcl is so popular in the EDA arena. I can stick some custom JTAG tooling in a Cyclone II design and talk to it by Tcl-scripting the 15-year-old software - and be confident that the same code (both in the FPGA and on the host computer) would work with the latest software and a current device.
Having said that, Tcl's not entirely free of compatibility and fragmentation frustrations: I sometimes wish that OpenOCD used full-fat Tcl rather than JimTcl, just so that I could make use of Tk. Being able to plot a histogram of data collected from the FPGA or make clickable buttons to trigger events is very useful.
The worst thing about tcl is that it exists... and it's still the language of choice for EDA tools.
I agree, so much for the benevolent dictator idea.
That's certainly a take...
> best thing about TCL is easy syntax and that everything is a string :)
What? That's the worst thing about TCL.
Tcl has stopped being everything a string with the release of Tcl 8.0 and bytecode engine.
> In earlier versions of Tcl, strings were used as a universal representation; in Tcl 8.0 strings are replaced with Tcl_Obj structures ("objects") that can hold both a string value and an internal form such as a binary integer or compiled bytecodes.
http://www.ira.inaf.it/Computing/manuals/tcl/man-8.0/Changes...
I remember this quite well, because as part of the core team tasked with writing native C extensions, the migration to Tcl 8 had quite an impact on our code.
I learned Python with version 1.6, and have a few O'Reilley books proving the point the language wasn't really that simple, those that never bothered reading the reference manuals end-to-end though it was.