Top all-time · #1955
Glenn Vanderburg
Personal blog · vanderburg.orgprogrammingwriting
Glenn Vanderburg's personal blog at vanderburg.org covers programming and writing. Since 2009, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 61 times, most often “The Tcl War”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Glenn Vanderburg's archive of the 1994 Usenet Tcl War, centred on RMS's 'Why you should not use Tcl' and John Ousterhout's reply, and his essay on developers and sharp tools.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Tcl War archive called a treasure; Ousterhout's reply worth reading; sharp-tools quote called 'so very true'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Web home of Glenn Vanderburg.
Most-linked posts?
- The Tcl War6 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-02-16
- Why you should not use Tcl (1994, "The Tcl War")6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-02-16
- Why you should not use Tcl5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-03-16
- /old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-07-08
- /OldPages/Tcl/war/0009.html4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-01-12
- The Tcl War4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-08-19
- /old_pages/Tcl/war/0009.html4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-07-03
- Sharp vs. Blunt Instruments2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-07-14
- Sharp vs. Blunt Instruments2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-10-04
- /old_pages/Tcl/war/0009.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-10-30
What Hacker News says?
There was a whole war about that, in which Sun originally supported TCL (having hired John Ousterhout), that was started by RMS firing the first shot ("Why you should not use TCL"), but which TCL eventually lost. The Tcl War (1994) (vanderburg.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025218 https://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/ Why you should not use Tcl. Richard Stallman (rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu). Fri, 23 Sep 94…
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/0009.html
on “Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)”Submitted The Tcl War (1994) as a story · 85 points
HN discussionGuile always surprised me not because of anything LISPy, but because of its relationship with TCL https://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/
on “A Tour of the Lisps”Submitted Why you should not use Tcl as a story · 44 points
HN discussionJO (John Ousterhout) is so thoughtful and lucid. My experience with him is firstly through Tcl, which I like more than he does now (time for a TIP: "-jo" switch to [unset] which removes complaint to unset non-existent variables)[0], and his book on it[1], and various papers. His work is at once both powerful and humble. Note in [0] how he without much emotion he suggests how Tcl came to be less prominent, and how ev…
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/0009.html
on “Book Review: A Philosophy of Software Design”Submitted What I Learned from Icon as a story · 39 points
HN discussionBack in 1994 rms told us all we should not use Tcl, that GNU was building their own scripting language. True believers have been using Guile ever since. http://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html
on “GNU Guile 2.2.0”Submitted The Tcl War as a story · 6 points
HN discussionGiven that Guile was basically launched by an RMS FUD attack on Tcl more than 20 years ago, 6 years seems like a rounding error. http://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/
on “GNU Guile 2.2.0”Submitted The Tcl War (1994) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis post from Glenn Vanderburg a few years back is incredibly relevant: http://www.vanderburg.org/blog/Software/Development/sharp_an... Especially this excerpt: "Weak developers will move heaven and earth to do the wrong thing. You can’t limit the damage they do by locking up the sharp tools. They’ll just swing the blunt tools harder."
Comment linking /blog/Software/Development/sharp_and_blunt.rdoc
on “Node.js has jumped the shark”Submitted Why you should not use Tcl (1994) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDon't be so sure you won't miss work if you haven't yet tried Factorio! ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362179 WoW was what convinced me how practical and powerful Lua really was, too. And that there were people out there that knew how to program it really well. The WoW "Auctioneer" mod in particular was quite advanced and elegantly written. It would analyze the prices of items in the auction house over ti…
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html
on “The death watch for the X Window System has probably started”Submitted The Tcl War (vs. Guile Scheme) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnd remember September 1994 when RMS launched the TCL War with "Why you should not use TCL"? http://www.vanderburg.org/OldPages/Tcl/war/0000.html
Comment linking /OldPages/Tcl/war/0000.html
on “James Gosling joining Google”Submitted The Tcl War as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWith 2020 hindsight (literally: it's now the year 2020! ;), I think Netscape should have just gone all-in on JavaScript, forgotten about XP/COM and its ilk, and made JavaScript itself the hub for extension and component integration, by giving it an excellent robust native code integration and extension API like Python has, and plugging things into JavaScript directly, instead of plugging things directly into the web…
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html
on “Is there any code in Firefox (as of 2020) that comes from Netscape Navigator?”Submitted The Tcl War (Richard Stallman on "Why you should not use Tcl") as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe Tcl War (1994) (vanderburg.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025218 https://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17060181 pwg on May 13, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Extending Tcl Why you should not use Tcl https://wiki.tcl.tk/16730 DonHopkins on May 14, 2018 [–] And with that diplomatically worded message, RMS kicked of The Infamous TCL War. That was Stall…
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/
on “The Birth of Tcl”Submitted The Tcl War as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> TCL I actually know the answer to that one! > The principal lesson of Emacs is that a language for extensions should not be a mere "extension language". It should be a real programming language, designed for writing and maintaining substantial programs. Because people will want to do that! > Another lesson from Emacs is that the way to make sure an extension facility is really flexible is to use it to write a larg…
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html
on “The Shepherd 1.0.0 released”Submitted Assertions and Tests (2003) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor anyone interest in Guile's history (and it is kind of interesting), it was born in the great Usenet Tcl War http://www.vanderburg.org/OldPages/Tcl/war/ It was intended to be GNU's official extension language, but it has never really caught on. That's sort of a shame, because it's actually a pretty nifty scheme implementation.
Comment linking /OldPages/Tcl/war/
on “Why Clojure?”Submitted Why you should not use Tcl (1994, "The Tcl War") as a story · 1 points
HN discussionPer http://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html Stallman's argument at the time was: "a language for extensions should... be a real programming language, designed for writing and maintaining substantial programs... The first Emacs used a string-processing language, TECO, which was inadequate. We made it serve, but it kept getting in our way. It made maintenance harder, and it made extensions harder to write...…
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html
on “The Tcl Programming Language: A Comprehensive Guide (2nd Edition)”Submitted Sharp vs. Blunt Instruments as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI think he was worried about Sun Microsystems involvement[0] w Tcl when John Ousterhout went there[1], too. But mostly seems like a collection of unsolicited strawmen[2]. Also probably love-of-lisp. [0] That any proximity to commerce is evil? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ousterhout [2] https://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/
on “The Tcl Programming Language: A Comprehensive Guide (2nd Edition)”Submitted Sharp vs. Blunt Instruments as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI thought the time TCL went wrong was back in 1994, when Sun unilaterally announced that TCL was going to be the official scripting language of World Wide Web browsers, prompting RMS to kick off the TCL War by writing "Why You Should Not Use TCL". [1] And then Sun changed their mind and decided that Java was going to be the official scripting language of World Wide Web browsers. And we all know how that turned out.…
Comment linking /old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html
on “Where Tcl and Tk Went Wrong (2010)”That's a very different approach. This is closer to using Lisp to generate C, whereas Lua+C usually involves a multilayered design: you write your engine in C or C++, write or generate a simple Lua wrapper for its API, and then the do logic in Lua, moving hotspots to C as necessary. ( http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlternateHardAndSoftLayers , as they say.) As a bonus, the cross-language boundaries are often natural seams f…
Comment linking /OldPages/Tcl/war/0009.html
on “Amplifying C”
