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Why I Like Tcl


n this blurb, I'll try to convince you that Tcl isn't just an old clunky language for contrarian weirdos and that it is in fact a hidden gem for the power-hungry hacker who wants a simple (but not barren!) glue language, like a mix of sh and Scheme. Pros § - Extremely consistent and elegant syntax described in 12 rules fitting in a short man page and no reserved keyword, nearing a Lisp/Forth level of ascetic purity.

Bytecode compiled with a stack VM and non-atomic (threads don't normally share memory) refcounting as sole GC (cycles are impossible by design and CoW semantics go well with it); also "stackless" since 8.6. Modifying the procedure arguments is done via upvar: in Tcl, a variable reference is just a name (string) attached to another stack frame number, quite elegant considering the language's core concepts. ), I still think that modern Tcl is a very lean, well thought-out and practical tool that can also bring joy to the metaprogrammers and aesthetes where something like Python or Perl can easily induce that "death by a thousand cuts" frustration due to numerous and disappointing design faults.

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