Subject: Re: Ousterhout and Tcl lost the plot with latest paper
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1997/04/02
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.scheme.scsh,comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.tcl,comp.lang.functional,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.perl.misc,comp.lang.python,comp.lang.eiffel
Message-ID: <3068991370338285@naggum.no>


* Bill Eldridge
| I don't know where Oesterhout's reference on MFC comes from
| (I'm just looking at Brain & Lovette's book).

considering that bad code can be written in any language, any language
comparison performed using examples must be judged by the quality of the
examples in each language.  it can't be all that hard to write a bad
example in language A and a good example in language B, and then proclaim
language B to be the winner -- this is how people compare languages all the
time, so either those who read them are bad programmers in any language (or
are not programmers at all) and don't know how to reject the bad examples,
or they already agree with the author of the comparison that language B is
better than language A.  in either case, it's a waste of anything but
marketing money.  it appears to me that this is indeed how Tcl is marketed.

in other words, prepare to see Tcl claim a significant market share.  also,
I'm sure people who read a paper with such a pompous title are unable to
detect any amount of false marketing.  "Scripting: Higher-Level Programming
for the 21st Century", indeed.

a language is only as good as the worst example in languages it claims to
win over.

#\Erik
-- 
I'm no longer young enough to know everything.