Version 15 of Peter Lewerin

What am I doing for Tcl?

I'm not doing very much at all nowadays, but now and then I add a small piece to the Tcl version of BOOK Programming Language Examples Alike Cookbook.

Who I am

I used to be a programmer, then I used to teach programming. Now I mostly just try to get up in the mornings :-(

I have a solid procedural languages background (read Pascal/C/C++) but now I prefer the beauty and power of scripting languages.

Trying out new languages, I usually attempt to port small familiar programs to them. One of those is the Bugs program from A K Dewdneys The Magic Machine. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... TkBugs!

Another thing I do to languages is to explore twisted and distorted versions of them, such as HereTcl. HereTcl is dormant right now, partially pending the latest advances in Snit technology.

I am also tinkering with a (pure-Tcl) implementation of Lisp, Luthien. It's targeted at ISLISP <= Luthien <= Common Lisp. That'll show those who called me crazy, MWAH HAH HA HA!

Opinions

My favorite languages:

Tcl: Well, duh. I could list several very good features of this language (and I have, sort of: Tcl testimonials). I could also simply observe that since Tcl is the language that I use the most, and the one I turn to first when trying out a new idea, it's got to be my favorite language.
Lisp: The Rock of Ages in the programming world. Probably the best programming language ever, but not the most convenient.
ML: Static typing done right. Less is more.
Ruby or Smalltalk: Either deserves to be named the native language of OOP. Ruby reads like pseudocode, so I think it should be made the premier teaching language for OOP everywhere.
C: The greasy, unpolished handyman without whom nothing would ever work around here.

My least favorite languages are those that I call Good girls don't languages, by which I mean languages that really go out of their way to try to protect me from my presumed ineptitude.

<gripe> Java is a special case in that category; a language that by design is supposed to keep the sharp tools out of my reach, while it's so convoluted and inconsistent it makes it hard to spot the mistakes I do make. Write once, bugs everywhere. </gripe>

gVim. Probably the best editor in the world. [L1 ]

Eurolish

If you need to write a 7-bit-safe Swedish document or source code, the Eurolish conversions might prove useful. The following letters need to be supported to fully handle documents in the Swedish language:

    A+ring   -- A`` / a``
    A+umlaut -- A'' / a''
    O+umlaut -- O'' / o''
    E+acute  -- E' / e'
    U+umlaut -- U'' / u''

The first three are in the ``Swedish alphabet'' (in collation order). The last two are found in names and a few borrowed words, and are collated as e and u (or possibly y?), respectively.

Useful pages on the Wiki

Several pages are useful, but this one gets my first bookmark for obvious reasons: http://purl.org/thecliff/tcl/wiki/SearchingAndBookmarkingURLsOnTheTcl'ersWiki

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