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> … staying on Tcl was unsustainable for developer recruitment and retention purposes… I agree that this is a real phenomenon, and I find fascinating because i
by jt2190 4y ago
> … staying on Tcl was unsustainable for developer recruitment and retention purposes…
I agree that this is a real phenomenon, and I find fascinating because it illustrates the role of fashion in software development. TCL may have been quirky compared to other languages, but actual working software was successfully developed in it by more-or-less typical developers. Yet it failed anyway because it wasn’t “cool”.
Not being trendy meant that fewer brains were thinking about it, evolving it by improving tooling and writing libraries, producing training materials and evangelizing it. Ultimately it just stagnates.
- ebiester 4y agoI don't even know if it's "fashion" as much as an industry that only knew that java 1.2 wasn't going to be the path forward if you wanted to develop with speed. There was no guarantee python or php were going to be the winners. I think it does speak to the amount of labor that goes into making a language viable as an option, though. Java had paid labor. Tcl didn't have enough unpaid labor to succeed while python did.