What am I doing for Tcl?
See BOOK Programming Language Examples Alike Cookbook
Who I am
I teach programming in Upper Secondary School at Vadsbogymnasiet, Mariestad, Sweden.
I have a solid procedural, compiled-languages background (read C/C++) and have only recently discovered the beauty and power of languages such as Perl, Ruby, and Tcl. The old dog may learn new tricks yet.
A Tcl Page in Swedish is taking shape at http://home.swipnet.se/pelewin/tcl/
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!
Opinions
Speaking of dogs, don't you hate Good girls don't languages too?
For the moment at least, I'm 100% into the dichotomy introduced by John Ousterhout in the article [L1 ]. I am trying to find ways to introduce that concept in my teaching, and Tcl/Tk is of course the perfect tool for that purpose. Now, I am a bit ashamed to teach in a language that I do not yet know all that well -- but when I got to know Tcl I just had to give my students the opportunity to try it.
I am beginning to think along these lines:
If neither of these goals seem very interesting, I'd recommend Tcl.
Did I mention Tcl?
What do you think?
Tools
Hmm, this[L2 ] seems like a nice tool for Tcl students. I'm not overly fond of syntax highlighting myself, but I know that students like it. I wonder if there are more worthwhile tools for teaching Tcl/Tk around?
Impressions
Since finding this Wiki, I have been very impressed by the applications described here, for instance A little hypertext system. This language packs a lot of punch in the hands of a creative and skilled programmer!
Someone posted an impromptu musing by me here: Tcl testimonials.
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, respectively.
Note that Tcl does handle the Swedish accented letters without any problems under normal 8-bit conditions. Here's an example of a Tcl program using Swedish accented letters in variable names (note that the curlies are needed when getting the values of the variables):
puts -nonewline "Vad heter du? " flush stdout set namn [gets stdin] puts -nonewline "Vilket �r �r du f�dd? " flush stdout set f�delse�r [gets stdin] set tid_nu [clock seconds] set nuvarande_�r [clock format $tid_nu -format "%Y"] set �lder [expr ${nuvarande_�r} - ${f�delse�r}] puts "I �r �r (eller blir) $namn ${�lder} �r gammal."
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