From: Joao Pedrosa <joaopedrosa@...>
Date: 2005-04-02T22:47:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Getting Ruby approved

Hi,

On Apr 2, 2005 10:09 AM, gabriele renzi <surrender_it@remove-yahoo.it> wrote:
> Joao Pedrosa ha scritto:
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> >>I can tell you that for a lot of people the answer has been and
> >>continues to be "yes", they would want to do something substantial
> >>in Tcl.  And yes, they have been quite successful at it.
> >
> >
> > I'm curious about what you consider strong points for Tcl in
> > comparison with Ruby. See, we are open to ideas and other languages.
> 
> I may be wrong, but as a "wannabe Tcler" I can think of some things in
> tclland:
> - the builtin in event loop

Is this, it? 
http://tcl.activestate.com/man/tcl8.4/TclCmd/after.htm

Ruby-GTK+ has the Gtk.timeout_add method which is handy. And a use of
threading and sleep may help in other cases.

> - the tcl vfs

This one looks simple and powerful when it's enough, according to this
description:
http://www.ruby-talk.org/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/61086

> - starkit/starpack/tclkit

Is this, it? 
http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html

It's good as a general purpose deployment tool. This demands a
combination of tools in Ruby.

> - they seem to have a great care on version compatibility/interoperability

That's nice. :-)

> - the ability to trace variable seem very interesting :)

This one is interesting, also:
http://www.wellho.net/forum/The-Tcl-programming-language/Tracing-a-variable-in-Tcl.html


I believe that self-contained languages are useful, but their reach or
goals can't be compared to more general purpose languages like Ruby,
though other languages like Tcl are very nice in their niche. It's
like JavaScript: how to replace them in their niche?

People can use general purpose languages and obtain as much as a good
result as the self-contained ones, but it takes some extra work, which
may pay-off in the next project.

When general purpose languages evolve, it means that their easiness
and reach may increase with the time, while the self-contained
languages may have a harder time embracing other goals (like becoming
cross-platform, supporting OO, etc).

Cheers,
Joao