7 ms·

It’s worth learning in its own right… high time someone reposted “TCL the Misunderstood”…

spindle 4y ago
Yes! http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html (I know you meant post at the top level, but I don't do that and don't have time to look up the rules for doing that.)
- stevekemp 4y ago
  That's always a great read. The last time I stumbled across it I decided to write my own "TCL", and I had a few weeks of fun doing that, in golang: https://github.com/skx/critical/ https://github.com/skx/critical/ It's a little addictive writing toy-interpreters for various (older and simpler) languages.
monetus 4y ago
Yes, very much so - I tend to temper my language more than I'd like. Tcl is the fucking bomb.
vitiral 4y ago
An excellent read. Googling I think it was posted only 3 months ago, so best to wait a bit... https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item%3Fid%3D31129936&ved=2ahUKEwjZj-_Sp7v5AhXQEEQIHdXUDx4QFnoECAYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw02FMnAfsaKIbQQIIQ0vAfC https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
mananaysiempre 4y ago
“I can’t believe I’m praising Tcl”[1] (last posted here[2] in 2020) also makes some good points that are not in other writeups, specifially regarding interactive use. I think Tcl(’s standard library) is still too wordy to make a comfortable interactive shell, but it’s still leagues above everything else I’ve seen; in particular, I can’t help but think Shivers’s dismissal of interactive use in his description of Scsh is something of a cop-out—there are (now, maybe not then) plenty of nice languages to hack a prototype or a quick script in, but somehow Bourne shell + Unix utilities is still the best we can do that won’t make my fingers ache? Tcl demonstrates very well that inside sh there’s a Lisp trying to get out (and Plan 9’s rc does the same but worse), but somehow that line of thought seems to not have been continued further. (Just in case, I see both Elvish and PowerShell as being more in the Scsh direction than the Tcl direction, that is making a “proper” language at the expense of interactive use and my fingers; Elvish appears to at least have a properness-Bourneness knob but that’s hardly a solution. Anyhow, I don’t think either contributes much to our knowledge of the virtually untouched interactive-use landscape, as opposed to the relatively well-explored scripting-language landscape.) [1] http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24386867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24386867
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  I’m rereading this now and I realize I was probably thinking about Oil, not Elvish, or rather that my brain mixed some of the Elvish materials I read into the Oil author’s (extensive and illuminating) blog posts and on top of that called the resulting chimera by its smaller part. I’m sorry.

Yes! http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html (I know you meant post at the top level, but I don't do that and don't have time to look up the rules for doing that.)

stevekemp 4y ago
That's always a great read. The last time I stumbled across it I decided to write my own "TCL", and I had a few weeks of fun doing that, in golang: https://github.com/skx/critical/ https://github.com/skx/critical/ It's a little addictive writing toy-interpreters for various (older and simpler) languages.

monetus 4y ago

Yes, very much so - I tend to temper my language more than I'd like. Tcl is the fucking bomb.

vitiral 4y ago

An excellent read. Googling I think it was posted only 3 months ago, so best to wait a bit... https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item%3Fid%3D31129936&ved=2ahUKEwjZj-_Sp7v5AhXQEEQIHdXUDx4QFnoECAYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw02FMnAfsaKIbQQIIQ0vAfC https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

mananaysiempre 4y ago

“I can’t believe I’m praising Tcl”[1] (last posted here[2] in 2020) also makes some good points that are not in other writeups, specifially regarding interactive use. I think Tcl(’s standard library) is still too wordy to make a comfortable interactive shell, but it’s still leagues above everything else I’ve seen; in particular, I can’t help but think Shivers’s dismissal of interactive use in his description of Scsh is something of a cop-out—there are (now, maybe not then) plenty of nice languages to hack a prototype or a quick script in, but somehow Bourne shell + Unix utilities is still the best we can do that won’t make my fingers ache? Tcl demonstrates very well that inside sh there’s a Lisp trying to get out (and Plan 9’s rc does the same but worse), but somehow that line of thought seems to not have been continued further. (Just in case, I see both Elvish and PowerShell as being more in the Scsh direction than the Tcl direction, that is making a “proper” language at the expense of interactive use and my fingers; Elvish appears to at least have a properness-Bourneness knob but that’s hardly a solution. Anyhow, I don’t think either contributes much to our knowledge of the virtually untouched interactive-use landscape, as opposed to the relatively well-explored scripting-language landscape.) [1] http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24386867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24386867

mananaysiempre 4y ago
I’m rereading this now and I realize I was probably thinking about Oil, not Elvish, or rather that my brain mixed some of the Elvish materials I read into the Oil author’s (extensive and illuminating) blog posts and on top of that called the resulting chimera by its smaller part. I’m sorry.