There are many ways to manage [concurrency concepts]: with threads, co-routines, continuations, generators, ... and events. A page on [Event programming and why it is relevant to Tcl/Tk programming] explains some of the background behind Tcl's emphasis of the latter. Events are a relatively "safe" programming model, particularly when compared to threading. [John Ousterhout]'s influential "Why Threads Are A Bad Idea" is available only as PowerPoint slides [http://home.pacbell.net/ouster/threads.ppt]. Notice that C# makes events first-class objects. This is consistent with Anders Hejlsberg's earlier work with Delphi ... ---- This Wiki has several other pages [http://www.purl.org/mini/tcl/2?event] on event-oriented programming techniques. ---- [Martin Lemburg] July 11nd, 2002: I have a question: Why isn't there an event Invoke for invokeable widgets, like buttons? Wouldn't make it sense to have such an event? To bind widgets using the Invoke event, like to connect a widget with the -command option to an event handler? Than ... button .b -text exit -command {cmdProc .b [clock seconds]}; ... would be equal to ... bind .b {cmdProc %W %t}; It shouldn't be a problem to use the substitution capabilities during the usage of a binding, like: button .b -text exit -command {cmdProc %W %t}; Wouldn't that be nice and consequent? Wouldn't it be consequent (for example) to use bindings to scrollbars or entries too? ... entry .e -textvariable filter; button .b -text "filter"; listbox .lb -listvar data -selectmode extended; scrollbar .sbx -orient horizontal; scrollbar .sby -orient vertical; bind .e {validateFilter %V %s}; bind .b {filter .e .lb}; bind .lb {.sbx set}; bind .lb {.sby set}; bind .sbx {.lb xview}; bind .sby {.lb yview}; There would be the chance to elimate all (event)handlers from that code, that only builds up the GUI. The code to handle events could use now use bindings. ---- While Tcl-ers are generally trained to believe, "event orientation: good; threads: bad", that is, of course, an exceptionally truncated version of reality. Threading's programmability problems begin with the necessity to mess with data consistency. Event-based programming, on the other hand, needs continuations or closures or comparable expressive power to manage the program-control stack. With none of these, developers must mess with stack contents on their own, and, of course, that's a horror. Tcl performs its usual compromise and provides everything as a string. More precisely, Tcl gives enough introspection to pack and unpack events and their "formal arguments". That's enough.