What is Digg?23 Comments
- ada80ro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Don't be scared by the ugly look :) It's using native widgets now, those are old screen shots.
Here is how Tcl/Tk looks now:
http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/screenshots/windowsxp.html
http://www.muonics.com/Products/MIBSmithy/screens.php - ada80ro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I'm learning Tcl/Tk right now. Initially I wanted to use Ruby+Fox for GUI but I don't like how Fox looks (some screen shots: http://freeride.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?ScreenShots), then I tried Ruby+Tk but the Tk binding is not very well documented. So I'm learning from the source right now :)
TCL is actually a very interesting language:
http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html - BobbyOnions, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I also contracted at Alcatel (embedded Unix systems) and they used Perl-Tk for their UIs as it was so damn cross-platform. We had embedded Motorola Unix (sorry, can't remember names) and trusted Solaris.
- BobbyOnions, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I contracted at NetScape (just before the AOL buy-out) and they used tcl for their standard scripting language across NT, HP-UX and Solaris.
No, it's unlikely that any new projects would use it and yes, it's definitely been superceded by other languages but there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it and the breadth of your knowledge and experience won't be impaired by taking an hour to read about it. - BobbyOnions, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Wow, I was up to three diggs with my first point, now it's down to one. Bizarre.
What, precisely, is there to digg down about real-world experience?
In every professional discipline, except software development, your credibility is increased when you show knowledge of prior work. Never forget that everything that's happening right now in software development is the cumulative result of billions of man-years of effort, some of which was right but some of which was wrong (with hindsight, clearly).
Modern-era software development seems to have got so narrow-minded (or paranoid) that experience in anything except the most cutting edge technology is deemed as a sign of weakness.
Compare software engineering with civil engineering. 95% of civil engineering projects are completed on time, within budget and to specification. Can you honestly make the same claims about your software projects? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, Mosaic is what became everybody's precious internet Exploder, so I guess it's the bomb.
- Kale, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Tcl/Tk is used a lot for CAD scripting. I believe UniGraphics uses a lot of it, and I think the GRIP scripting language for CNC machines is based off if Tcl/Tk.
- petepete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"...World Wide Web browser such as mosaic..."
I hope tcl/tk hasn't changed much - illynova, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6... does anyone still use tcl/tk?
There's a plethora of high level languages that are easier to use, much better designed, and have far better libraries than tcl/tk. It was useful a long time ago, but now there are much, much better alternatives.
Scripting? Perl, Python, heck even ruby
C# is also excellent, you can use managed windows forms, or better yet gtk# - CaughtThinking, on 10/28/2007, -0/+2TCL is too damn awesome to be understood by the fashion hungry public. Ruby's metaprogramming options are a joke compared to TCL and TCL is way faster too. It's amazing what the public leaps to; it has nothing to do with the nature of the solution; its more like a huge lemming effort.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2TCL is also used as the scripting language in the open source AOLserver. Its a web/application server. Before you think "AOL", you should realize that it was developed in the early 90s by a company that was then purchased by AOL, and has been championed by MIT profs since then (Greenspun). It's highly advanced, multithreaded, supports DB pooling, etc. All of that since about 1995, too.
- frukt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2amsn [ http://amsn.sourceforge.net/ ] is an example of a popular program implemented in Tcl/Tk
- Wootery, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Odd how you got dugg up, and my very similar post wasn't...
Have you tried something other than Fox or Tk? There's Qt and the Java ones (SWT and Swing via JRuby).
Also, your link to screenshots of how awful Fox looks isn't working. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2TCL is also the basis for JACL which is used as an admin scripting language in WebSphere and WebLogic
- Lobster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes it is used by modern and exciting projects
For example it is built into Puppy Linux (along with Puppy Basic and Perl)
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/TclTutor
. . . this is where I came across it
It works well and is simple to use. Do programmers prefer hard and complex? Surely not?
http://tmxxine.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakka=AsqDetails - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Tcl/Tk *is* a wacky holdover from the olden days. Kind of a Lisp of a language - too different from the others to be easy to transition to, but with the odd feature that makes you go "now why couldn't other languages do that?" And every line you type makes you feel like you're hacking on a PDP-11.
That being said, two cases where it shines is expect and wish. The wish (windowing shell) will be the easiest GUI prototype you ever slapped together; it's the first tool I reach for if I want a dialog-based program that can be slapped together in minutes.
Expect is kind of painful in a Perlish way, but it solves a unique class of problems that are impossible to solve any other way. Expect together with lynx or curl can be a formidable penetration-tester, bot-builder, and other edgy uses.
Sorry to sound like a fanboy - I haven't actually used Tcl/tk in about a year. Doesn't it suck when you're too busy to play with your favorite toy languages? - Wootery, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Forgot the working links :
http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/screenshots/windowsxp.html
http://www.muonics.com/Products/MIBSmithy/screens.php
Those Fox guys really think that having your GUI look the same (that is - terrible) on every platform is preferable to having it look native... fascinating. - ada80ro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here is the link again:
http://freeride.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?ScreenShots
I've used the Freeride IDE, it looks worse than in those screeshots.
Also, here is a small IRC Client:
-Ruby+Fox version: http://whytheluckystiff.net/ruby/smircer.rb
-Tcl+Tk version: http://wiki.tcl.tk/13129
I think the tcl/tk version is much nicer, Ruby+Fox doesn't look like Ruby (at least the first 20 lines). - Wootery, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Tk is rather old, I haven't learnt enough of any GUI toolkit to compare them, but I would assume it isn't as efficient to develop as the newer alternatives...?
That said, with ada's links above, I can't deny that Tk GUIs look good.
I took a look at Fox, but it looks like Windows 98 on whatever OS you run it on. (A horrifying thought for Mac users.)
The Ruby binding for GTK+ / GTK2 isn't all that great, from what I've read.
Qt isn't FOSS.
SWT on Ruby (the language I'm learning) via JRuby sounds good, but I can't get it to work. Native look (Azureus looks great on any OS) and FOSS. - ratsg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I have not done much TK stuff, but as a UNIX/Solaris sys admin, I have done a lot of shell scripting and system automation in TCL and Expect.
- bogomill, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2@Bobby
You mentiioned that you worked for NetScape in your post. That's why you're getting dug down. Now watch as I get dug down like you as well. - estacado, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1The navigation icons on bottom of the tutorial page looks like a "male organ" with the head cut off.
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