Why is tcl broken?

[Paul Duffin]

Fernando Mato Mira wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
>   I'm trying to collect a list of all the _current_ issues making tcl
> a bad language choice. I'd like concrete examples, and not just
> vague assertions that cannot be put porward honestly. I think
> that as is usual in this newsgroups, there's going to be people that
> actually know what they are talking about (and even better, experienced)
> 
> when referring to a language that is not their favorite.
>   If you have references to articles of the sort, that will be useful,
> too.
>   Note that I've not listed comp.lang.tcl for increased productivity,
> and to avoid starting a flame war. Hopefully some misconceptions
> will be filtered down here, and _then_, the summary can be presented
> in that newsgroup for their defense.
> 

I will start by saying that your choice of title and opening statement
was bad and certainly not conducive to a reasoned debate about the
pros and cons of Tcl.

What you are going to end up with from this sort of article is a list of
outdated problems from people who have not touched it for years, plus
a lot of myths and possibly mingled with a few nuggets of useful 
information.

Whether the choice of language is a good or bad idea depends entirely on
the context. i.e. environment and job to be done.

You cannot avoid taking into account the context even if you only look
at the language from a semantic / syntactic view point.

-- 
Paul Duffin
DT/6000 Development	Email: pduffin at hursley.ibm.com
IBM UK Laboratories Ltd., Hursley Park nr. Winchester
Internal: 7-246880	International: +44 1962-816880