Re:TCL: The Tool Command Language – Lisp for the Masses [video]
by bch on Friday October 22, 2021 @07:24PM
(#28964011)
I wasn’t actually maintaining software across this divide, but I do still occasionally see Tcl 7.x installations in the wild and find it quite recognizable. It seemed to me the biggest changes from 7->8 were byte code interpreter and “dual ported” Tcl_Obj to store values vs naive C strings(which should have only exposed themselves as “improved performance”).
The release notes[0] for Tcl 8 seem to list minor-ish annoyances, but perhaps you did have to support something across the 7-8 divide; I won’t argue against your experience in that case.
> As always, the best way to predict the future is to make it
Truth.
[0] https://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.0.html#incompatibilities
Re:TCL: The Tool Command Language – Lisp for the Masses [video]
by nrclark on Friday October 22, 2021 @10:35PM
(#28965177)
Did TCL have a compatibility break with version 8? I've always perceived TCL as an incredibly stable language, with features added but rarely removed/changed. Is there a time when that wasn't true?
Re:TCL: The Tool Command Language – Lisp for the Masses [video]
by lehenbauer on Saturday October 23, 2021 @06:34PM
(#28973039)
Correct, the move from Tcl 7 to Tcl 8 did not break Tcl code nor C extensions, and brought huge performance benefits. C extensions could be updated to use them, but the C string API continued (and continues) to exist.
Python, on the other hand, felt like it was at version 1.5.2 absolutely forever.
> It seems to me there’s a lot to complain about with Python - the low-fruit classic is the GIL.
Except that, in the late-1990s/early-2000s, it didn't matter. Scripting languages were slow relative to compiled languages. Multiple-threads effectively didn't exist. Hyperthreading didn't hit until 2003--after the DotBomb.
> Despite that huge impediment, it came to be a scientific computing go-to language. Who would have guessed that?
Gee, who could have guessed that a whole lot of scientists and engineers kinda liked Matlab the program but hated Mathworks the company and that providing somewhere for them to jump ship to would be popular? Like ... absolutely everybody?
Of course, just the idea isn't enough. The alternative has to be sufficiently capable.
Thus ... Enthought. Enthought personnel put in a lot of elbow grease and work to make Python a scientific computing go-to language.
As always, the best way to predict the future is to make it.