From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2005-04-03T07:59:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Getting Ruby approved

In article <3Ow3e.41781$zZ1.1225461@twister1.libero.it>,
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

Yes this is a good thing.  It probably developed so early in Tcl because 
of the close marriage between Tcl and Tk.  

>- the tcl vfs

But aren't we moving in that direction now that open can take URLs?

>- starkit/starpack/tclkit

Interesting.  Ruby has projects which are moving in that direction (the 
various 2exe modules), but probably nothing quite as mature.  Certainly 
worth a look.

>- they seem to have a great care on version compatibility/interoperability
>- the ability to trace variable seem very interesting :)

Can you elaborate?

None of the items you mentioned are core language features per se (except 
maybe the last one).  They are more like add-ons.  Some of them are 
'cultural'.  Certainly we can learn from something like starkit.  But as 
far as the language I'd rather develop in goes - I definately prefer 
developing in Ruby as opposed to Tcl.

....but YMMV.

Phil