4 ms·

Is Tcl/Tk Dying Out?

3 points by bch 11y ago

ferrari8608 11y ago
I would like to see Tk/Tcl get more attention. I've been working with it in Python (tkinter module), and it's actually really nice. The fact that tkinter is part of the standard library is what drew me to it initially, and after using it for a couple of cross-platform applications, I see no reason to mess with QT or GTK dependencies. I wrote a GUI application about a week ago in just a couple of days, under 200 lines of code including the GUI and backend logic. Since it's Python, it 'just works' in both Windows and Linux. Using the ttk widgets, the interface looks native wherever it's run. Python's built-in IDE, IDLE, is written with tkinter. It's not feature-packed like the big name IDE's out there, but it works and looks decent enough nonetheless. I wouldn't want to learn GUI programming with Tcl/Tk (again), but now that I have, it's quite easy to get what I want done with it and quickly.
bch 11y ago
For reference: Jeff - Jeff Hobbs, aka Tcl Guy, currently CTO and VP, Engineering at ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com/company/management http://www.activestate.com/company/management) Larry Virden - a well-respected Tcl community member (http://wiki.tcl.tk/16 http://wiki.tcl.tk/16) Richard Suchenwirth - Dev Engineer at Siemens Postal Automation -- famous in Tcl community for coming up w/ seemingly infinate brilliant small solutions and demos (http://wiki.tcl.tk/496 http://wiki.tcl.tk/496) and happens to be a voracious consumer of cinema Dave Welton - our own @davidw, a recovering Tcl'er (http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/03/30/where-tcl-and-tk-went-wrong/ http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/03/30/where-tcl-and-tk-went-...) Jean-Claude Wippler - prodigious developer, respected community member (http://wiki.tcl.tk/10 http://wiki.tcl.tk/10) Richard Hipp - Tcl Core Team emeratus, SQLite (http://www.sqlite.org http://www.sqlite.org), fossil (http://www.fossil-scm.org http://www.fossil-scm.org), among other things Larry McVoy - ex Sun, Google (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McVoy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McVoy), of lmbench (http://www.bitmover.com/lmbench/ http://www.bitmover.com/lmbench/) and bitkeeper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper) fame, among other things... Gerald Lester - respected developer/community member, Tcl Board of Directors. John - John Ousterhout: Brilliant thinker/developer (http://www.highlyscalablesystems.com/3525/favorite-sayings-by-john-ousterhout-precious-experience-and-advice-for-building-systems/ http://www.highlyscalablesystems.com/3525/favorite-sayings-b...) who brought us Tcl, log structured filesystems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-structured_file_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-structured_file_system), great articles on event-oriented programming ([pdf] http://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/threads.pdf http://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/threads.pdf) and testing/life-cycle-management (http://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/sayings.php http://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/sayings.php), as well as the raft consensus protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_%28computer_science%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_%28computer_science%29).

3 points by bch 11y ago

I would like to see Tk/Tcl get more attention. I've been working with it in Python (tkinter module), and it's actually really nice. The fact that tkinter is part of the standard library is what drew me to it initially, and after using it for a couple of cross-platform applications, I see no reason to mess with QT or GTK dependencies. I wrote a GUI application about a week ago in just a couple of days, under 200 lines of code including the GUI and backend logic. Since it's Python, it 'just works' in both Windows and Linux. Using the ttk widgets, the interface looks native wherever it's run. Python's built-in IDE, IDLE, is written with tkinter. It's not feature-packed like the big name IDE's out there, but it works and looks decent enough nonetheless. I wouldn't want to learn GUI programming with Tcl/Tk (again), but now that I have, it's quite easy to get what I want done with it and quickly.

bch 11y ago

For reference: Jeff - Jeff Hobbs, aka Tcl Guy, currently CTO and VP, Engineering at ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com/company/management http://www.activestate.com/company/management) Larry Virden - a well-respected Tcl community member (http://wiki.tcl.tk/16 http://wiki.tcl.tk/16) Richard Suchenwirth - Dev Engineer at Siemens Postal Automation -- famous in Tcl community for coming up w/ seemingly infinate brilliant small solutions and demos (http://wiki.tcl.tk/496 http://wiki.tcl.tk/496) and happens to be a voracious consumer of cinema Dave Welton - our own @davidw, a recovering Tcl'er (http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/03/30/where-tcl-and-tk-went-wrong/ http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/03/30/where-tcl-and-tk-went-...) Jean-Claude Wippler - prodigious developer, respected community member (http://wiki.tcl.tk/10 http://wiki.tcl.tk/10) Richard Hipp - Tcl Core Team emeratus, SQLite (http://www.sqlite.org http://www.sqlite.org), fossil (http://www.fossil-scm.org http://www.fossil-scm.org), among other things Larry McVoy - ex Sun, Google (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McVoy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McVoy), of lmbench (http://www.bitmover.com/lmbench/ http://www.bitmover.com/lmbench/) and bitkeeper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper) fame, among other things... Gerald Lester - respected developer/community member, Tcl Board of Directors. John - John Ousterhout: Brilliant thinker/developer (http://www.highlyscalablesystems.com/3525/favorite-sayings-by-john-ousterhout-precious-experience-and-advice-for-building-systems/ http://www.highlyscalablesystems.com/3525/favorite-sayings-b...) who brought us Tcl, log structured filesystems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-structured_file_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-structured_file_system), great articles on event-oriented programming ([pdf] http://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/threads.pdf http://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/threads.pdf) and testing/life-cycle-management (http://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/sayings.php http://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/sayings.php), as well as the raft consensus protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_%28computer_science%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_%28computer_science%29).