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One of my first jobs was in Tcl and I still wake up with night sweats about it. Some languages were just meant to die. I have no idea why anyone would be intere

One of my first jobs was in Tcl and I still wake up with night sweats about it. Some languages were just meant to die. I have no idea why anyone would be interested in using it in 2022.

adonovan 4y ago
My first job too! So true. Everyone knows how easy it is to make serious quoting mistakes in a Bourne shell script, but Tcl takes the risk to a whole new danger level. But any harm done by Tcl is more than redeemed by its creator being the author of one of my favorite of all programming books, A Philosophy of Software Design.
RHSeeger 4y ago
Some of my graduate level work was in Tcl, and my first job used a lot of Tcl. I have fond memories of the time, and Tcl is one of my favorite languages to this day. It's power and flexibility are fantastic.
TillE 4y ago
I had to use Tcl/Tk for some computational chemistry circa 2005. I'm sure it seemed amazing in the early 90s for quick GUI apps, but 10 years later it was just an absolute nightmare compared to powerful languages like Python.
- masklinn 4y ago
  Tcl was definitely powerful, and didn't fall short of Python on that front. It's on most of the other fronts that it did.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
I wrote some small scripts in it for VHDL projects but I can't imagine writing any large project in it, that is very cringe.
protomyth 4y ago
Tcl (expect) was joyous compared to my time with IBM JCL.
dis-sys 4y ago
many years ago, when my ex-girlfriend was in college, for whatever reason she managed to get herself into a course that involve programming and for some unknown reasons, they were asked to do it in tcl. obviously I was the go to expert on everything related to computers and I still remember the shock when she told me that I need to spend my weekends on helping her to understand tcl.
qaq 4y ago
+1 :)
IshKebab 4y ago
It is the de facto scripting language in the EDA world unfortunately. I agree though. Terrible language. I initially thought this was going the other way round so you could write your EDA scripts in Go. No idea why you would want to use TCL when you can use Go. I briefly worked on a WASM to TCL transpiler so I could write EDA scripts in Rust. Got it kind of working but WASM is actually quite large and TCL integers in the version I was forced to use (thanks PowerArtist) are completely broken so it ended up being not worth it.
cmacleod4 4y ago
Tcl is perhaps an acquired taste, but some of us weirdos still like it - https://colin-macleod.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-im-tcl-ish.html https://colin-macleod.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-im-tcl-ish.ht...
smrtinsert 4y ago
My first long term job was in tcl and I have nothing but love for that language. Extremely simple syntax wise with the ability to extend the language whenever you wanted. Still makes other languages look bad imo. Only experience that came close was clojure. There is so much power in tcls expressiveness.

One of my first jobs was in Tcl and I still wake up with night sweats about it. Some languages were just meant to die. I have no idea why anyone would be interested in using it in 2022.

adonovan 4y ago

My first job too! So true. Everyone knows how easy it is to make serious quoting mistakes in a Bourne shell script, but Tcl takes the risk to a whole new danger level. But any harm done by Tcl is more than redeemed by its creator being the author of one of my favorite of all programming books, A Philosophy of Software Design.

RHSeeger 4y ago

Some of my graduate level work was in Tcl, and my first job used a lot of Tcl. I have fond memories of the time, and Tcl is one of my favorite languages to this day. It's power and flexibility are fantastic.

TillE 4y ago

I had to use Tcl/Tk for some computational chemistry circa 2005. I'm sure it seemed amazing in the early 90s for quick GUI apps, but 10 years later it was just an absolute nightmare compared to powerful languages like Python.

masklinn 4y ago
Tcl was definitely powerful, and didn't fall short of Python on that front. It's on most of the other fronts that it did.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

I wrote some small scripts in it for VHDL projects but I can't imagine writing any large project in it, that is very cringe.

protomyth 4y ago

Tcl (expect) was joyous compared to my time with IBM JCL.

dis-sys 4y ago

many years ago, when my ex-girlfriend was in college, for whatever reason she managed to get herself into a course that involve programming and for some unknown reasons, they were asked to do it in tcl. obviously I was the go to expert on everything related to computers and I still remember the shock when she told me that I need to spend my weekends on helping her to understand tcl.

qaq 4y ago

+1 :)

IshKebab 4y ago

It is the de facto scripting language in the EDA world unfortunately. I agree though. Terrible language. I initially thought this was going the other way round so you could write your EDA scripts in Go. No idea why you would want to use TCL when you can use Go. I briefly worked on a WASM to TCL transpiler so I could write EDA scripts in Rust. Got it kind of working but WASM is actually quite large and TCL integers in the version I was forced to use (thanks PowerArtist) are completely broken so it ended up being not worth it.

cmacleod4 4y ago

Tcl is perhaps an acquired taste, but some of us weirdos still like it - https://colin-macleod.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-im-tcl-ish.html https://colin-macleod.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-im-tcl-ish.ht...

smrtinsert 4y ago

My first long term job was in tcl and I have nothing but love for that language. Extremely simple syntax wise with the ability to extend the language whenever you wanted. Still makes other languages look bad imo. Only experience that came close was clojure. There is so much power in tcls expressiveness.