Why is tcl broken?

[Fernando Mato Mira]

Cameron Laird wrote:

> In article <4.1.19990610150908.00d09790 at exchsrv>,
> Fernando Mato Mira  <matomira at iname.com> wrote:
>
> So I take it you're going to end up arguing
> for Eiffel in favor of Scheme?

Oh, no. The crossposting logic is that people
in any comp.lang.whatever-is-unpopular-and-clean tend to know
other things besides their favorite, because they are many times
forced to touch other stuff as well.
I'm not going to argue during the presentation. I just made
sure to pass the message that people should look around
before jumping eyes closed in some bandwagon (but
obviously, I took care to mention things like Java and STk
(Disclaimer: I'm not a Java pundit. And if I needed to to
JVM-compatible stuff, I'd try to use Kawa first (duh)))

My first objective in this research is to try to be honest. I only
have fuzzy memories of the discussions about tcl of years ago,
and as I promised myself never to read a book on it.. (and even
if I did, just for this, then I would be commiting the popular gaffe
of speaking about something in which you have little experience).

> I'll ask a better question:  is maintainability
> to you a philosophically-accessible dimension?

Yes. A sound software engineering philosophy
requires that you think about maintainability
for tools used to build things that will be more than
prototypes. Of course, what different groups
in `sound' differs, so we are indeed getting into
philo-land here.

> If you seriously want to debate syntax and
> semantics in academic abstraction ... well, at
> least we need to know that.

Syntax ans semantics in the sense that
affect a software engineering practice.

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> >If so, does speed ever become an issue? I assume that Tk works well
> Rarely.  Much less often than the uninitiated
> suspect.

That's the impression I have. But then, what are those `less often' cases?
(Besides trying to do silly things, like writing a fast-paced  video game in Tk)

> >enough that you'd never have to look at the tcl code, and live happily
> >inside your reflective Scheme world)
> Some TkSchemers do.  Some don't.  It depends.

Examples?

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