5 ms·

The State of the TclQuadcode compiler (2017) [pdf]

30 points by blacksqr 8y ago

fake-name 8y ago
Upsides: It's neat! Downsides: Oh god TCL is horrible.
- bch 8y ago
  Tcl is a joy in the right context, and there’s a lot of places “that context” is present. Tcl is also conceptually simple enough, but sufficiently powerful that it’s a really interesting language/environment to develop in, and indeed hot-rod (or watch being hot-rodded). Fantastic work Donal and Kevin.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  It's just dirty lisp without the parens overload. I wouldn't write voluminous amounts of code in it and numerics are tedious at best but it excels at the thing it was designed to do: be a lightweight embeddable language. You can strip it down so that scripts are only usable for configuration settings, safely run untrusted code, or let it be fully Turing complete.
- gaius 8y ago
  Oh god TCL is horrible Think of it as a C library with a very flexible configuration file... TCL is amazing and was doing what Lua and Node do a decade or more before they badly reinvented a subset of it and called it new.
  - tomcam 8y ago
    What makes Lua worse than TCL? Not a TCL expert.
    - pmarin 8y ago
      He is not saying that Lua is worse. Tcl was doing event based programming decades before Node and lua make it trendy.
- exikyut 8y ago
  I'd appreciate if you could add a few words substantiating/explaining what you mean.
aogl 8y ago
The whole thing that it is an ahead-of-time compiler, that is, it runs in advance of execution rather than generating code when a procedure is first executed.. Is very cool.
fithisux 8y ago
I have mostly good words on TCL. But I would be more interested in having a lisp compiler that is adapted to TCL. Tcl faces significant competition these days.
rkeene2 8y ago
I hope there will be another update next week at the Tcl Conference in Houston, TX !
patrickg_zill 8y ago
Lots of people hate on TCL, yet, it is still a scripting language used in routers and in NaviServer, which is used by TU-Wien to teach over 40K people, with Gustaf Neumann spearheading it https://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/n/Neumann:Gustaf https://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/n/Neumann:Gustaf . It is used heavily in many other places as well to do useful work. And don't forget "expect" which is based on TCL also.
- enygmata 8y ago
  F5 Networks uses it too.
nothrows 8y ago
TCL is fun to write. And with Tk desktop apps are fast and easy to whip up. Kicks Atoms Ass for internal apps and doesn't eat all your ram. I don't get why its gets so much flack. It's sort of a fun mix between lisp and perl. I hope it never dies.
KasianFranks 8y ago
This quote sums it up for me "I believe Tcl has been mischaracterized and has suffered in terms of open popularity. But for insiders, it remains as one of those secret indispensable Ninja tools that is used over and over again for competitive advantage." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025218

30 points by blacksqr 8y ago

fake-name 8y ago

Upsides: It's neat! Downsides: Oh god TCL is horrible.

bch 8y ago
Tcl is a joy in the right context, and there’s a lot of places “that context” is present. Tcl is also conceptually simple enough, but sufficiently powerful that it’s a really interesting language/environment to develop in, and indeed hot-rod (or watch being hot-rodded). Fantastic work Donal and Kevin.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
It's just dirty lisp without the parens overload. I wouldn't write voluminous amounts of code in it and numerics are tedious at best but it excels at the thing it was designed to do: be a lightweight embeddable language. You can strip it down so that scripts are only usable for configuration settings, safely run untrusted code, or let it be fully Turing complete.
gaius 8y ago
Oh god TCL is horrible Think of it as a C library with a very flexible configuration file... TCL is amazing and was doing what Lua and Node do a decade or more before they badly reinvented a subset of it and called it new.
- tomcam 8y ago
  What makes Lua worse than TCL? Not a TCL expert.
  - pmarin 8y ago
    He is not saying that Lua is worse. Tcl was doing event based programming decades before Node and lua make it trendy.
exikyut 8y ago
I'd appreciate if you could add a few words substantiating/explaining what you mean.

aogl 8y ago

The whole thing that it is an ahead-of-time compiler, that is, it runs in advance of execution rather than generating code when a procedure is first executed.. Is very cool.

fithisux 8y ago

I have mostly good words on TCL. But I would be more interested in having a lisp compiler that is adapted to TCL. Tcl faces significant competition these days.

rkeene2 8y ago

I hope there will be another update next week at the Tcl Conference in Houston, TX !

patrickg_zill 8y ago

Lots of people hate on TCL, yet, it is still a scripting language used in routers and in NaviServer, which is used by TU-Wien to teach over 40K people, with Gustaf Neumann spearheading it https://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/n/Neumann:Gustaf https://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/n/Neumann:Gustaf . It is used heavily in many other places as well to do useful work. And don't forget "expect" which is based on TCL also.

enygmata 8y ago
F5 Networks uses it too.

nothrows 8y ago

TCL is fun to write. And with Tk desktop apps are fast and easy to whip up. Kicks Atoms Ass for internal apps and doesn't eat all your ram. I don't get why its gets so much flack. It's sort of a fun mix between lisp and perl. I hope it never dies.

KasianFranks 8y ago

This quote sums it up for me "I believe Tcl has been mischaracterized and has suffered in terms of open popularity. But for insiders, it remains as one of those secret indispensable Ninja tools that is used over and over again for competitive advantage." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025218