Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:07:06 -0400
From: mark@mark.mielke.cc
To: Richard Troy <rtroy@ScienceTools.com>
Cc: Carlo Stonebanks <stonec.register@sympatico.ca>,
	pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: OT: TCL vs Perl Re: commit so slow program looks frozen
Message-ID: <20061026180706.GA14287@mark.mielke.cc>
References: <ehqhpe$20jt$1@news.hub.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.33.0610261049030.30114-100000@denzel.in>
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Perl started out fast - TCL started out slow. Perl used syntax that,
although it would drive some people crazy, followed a linguistic curve
that Larry Wall claimed was healthy. The English language is crazy,
and yet, it has become standard world wide as well. Designed, regular
languages like Esperanto have not received much support either.

Perl is designed to be practical. TCL was designed to be minimalistic.

Perl uses common idioms for UNIX programmers. // for regular expressions,
$VAR for variables, Many of the statement are familiar for C programmers.
++ for increment (compare against 'incr abc' for TCL). $a=5 for assignment,
compare against 'set abc 5' in TCL.

TCL tries to have a reduced syntax, where 'everything is a string'
which requires wierdness for people.  For example, newline is
end-of-line, so { must be positioned correctly. Code is a string, so
in some cases you need to escape code, otherwise not.

Perl has object oriented support built-in. It's ugly, but it works.
TCL has a questionable '[incr tcl]' package.

Perl has a wealth of modules on CPAN to do almost anything you need to.
TCL has the beginning of one (not as rich), but comes built-in with things
like event loops, and graphicals (Tk).

I could go on and on - but I won't, because this is the PostgreSQL
mailing list. People either get Perl, or TCL, or they don't. More
people 'get' Perl, because it was marketted better, it's syntax is
deceivingly comparable to other well known languages, and for the
longest time, it was much faster than TCL to write (especially when
using regular expressions) and faster to run.

Did TCL get treated unfairly as a result? It's a language. Who cares! :-)

Cheers,
mark

-- 
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