Scripting lanuages for laboratory tests

[Cameron Laird]

In article <aahh9q$a1k$1 at nyheter.chalmers.se>,
Jacob Hallen <jacob at boris.cd.chalmers.se.cd.chalmers.se> wrote:
>In article <aagkfm$6kf$1 at news5.svr.pol.co.uk>,
>Etta Makwetta <etienne at coetzeee.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>"Everything is a string"-paradigm painful to use.
			.
			.
			.
>Tkinter is much easier to use than plain tk. I have built fairly substantial
>applications in both. You pay a small price in the form of having to have
>both Python and tcl installed on your machine, and there are a few very
>small spots where the tcl base of tkinter shows through.
>
>Jacob Hallén
>
>-- 

There are wise, experienced people who share these
opinions.  There are similarly qualified people on
the other side.  I think it's most accurate to ad-
vise that "everything is a string" and Tkinter vs.
Tk are close enough issues that there's a large
subjective component to their evaluation.  For me,
"subjective" is not a euphemism for "bad"; it just
means, "likely to depend on personal factors."

The nice part of this whole story is that both
Tcl/Tk and Python/Tkinter are sufficiently light-
weight that a good engineer can get a reasonable
sense of their operation in a day.  *That*'s the
counsel we should give:  take these languages out
for a spin, giving special considerations to the
aspects already mentioned.

Incidentally, the "everything is a string" model
can be quite entertaining, in the hands of a master; 
see <URL: http://wiki.tcl.tk/everything >.
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html