Version 0 of Why you should not use Tcl

Updated 2006-09-13 22:02:24

TR - Richard Stallman is an important figure in the OpenSource community. Many many years ago (24 September 1994) he started a thread on comp.lang.tcl, which is perhaps one of the longest in this groiuo with 417 postings:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/ec95c6b7e531a9a8/8ea836c1005a0e78

It starts like this ...

 [[Please redistribute wherever appropriate.]] 

                     Why you should not use Tcl 
                        Richard Stallman, GNU Project 

 As interest builds in extensible application programs and tools, and 
 some programmers are tempted to use Tcl, we should not forget the 
 lessons learned from the first widely used extensible text 
 editor--Emacs. 

 The principal lesson of Emacs is that a language for extensions should 
 not be a mere "extension language".  It should be a real programming 
 language, designed for writing and maintaining substantial programs. 
 Because people will want to do that!   

 Extensions are often large, complex programs in their own right, and 
 the people who write them deserve the same facilities that other 
 programmers rely on.

And so on. If you have nothing else to do, read this thread and see on this Wiki why Tcl is alive and well 12 years later ...

(Btw., John Ousterhout's answer followed two days later in this thread as post number 71)