Language extensibility (was: Why is tcl broken?)

[William Tanksley]

On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 23:07:23 GMT, William H. Duquette wrote:
>On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 17:10:59 +0200, Fernando Mato Mira
>>Tim Bradshaw wrote:

>>> But the language of Lisp macros is Lisp, that's really the whole
>>> point!  Without knowing TCL, I find it hard to see how you can
>>> introduce new constructs to the language *without* a macro language,
>>> even if that language is TCL.

>>Err.. What about Forth keywords?

>Tcl is a lot like Forth, too. :-)

That's how it initially stuck me -- Tcl looks like it was, at least in
concept, designed by someone attempting to apply Forth's looseness to a
language with a parser and a syntax.  This is something I've always been
curious about, and Tcl satisfied that curiosity -- I don't think it's a
good mix.

>You can do more interesting things in Lisp with readmacros,
>from what I'm told, including making it look like an entirely
>different language.  Tcl code always looks like Tcl code.

Now Lisp is a worthwhile improvement on Forth.  ;-)

(Yes, I know -- the ancestry goes the other way around: Lisp -> Scheme ->
Forth.)

>Will

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley