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From: papresco@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: Ousterhout and Tcl lost the plot with latest paper
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Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 21:09:04 GMT
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In article <5i7euq$cmg@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM>,
John Ousterhout <ouster@tcl.eng.sun.com> wrote:
>    His arguments on "typeless" languages is useless.
>    You don't need a "scripting language" to
>    get usable abstractions without the need
>    to deal with low-level issues.
>    
>    button .b -text Hello! -font {Times 16} -command {puts hello}
>    
>    In Macintosh Common Lisp I'll write this as:
>    
>    (make-instance 'button-dialog-item
>      :dialog-item-text "Hello"
>      :view-font '("Times" 16)
>      :dialog-item-action (lambda (item) (print "hello")))
>
>I think this example supports my claim that scripting languages are a
>lot easier to use when you need to mix and match lots of things of
>different types.  The MCL example is a lot more verbose and complicated
>than the Tcl example.

Easier to use for people who are not knowledgable about the language? Yes.
Easier to use for people who are? No. The latter is certainly no harder
for a MCL programmer than the former is for a TCL programmer. It will also
be easier to maintain, for all of the usual reasons.

 Paul Prescod

