
TCL is dead))) - alexkarta
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=tcl8.6
======
dalke
Will you explain what I'm looking at? How does that page show that 'TCL is
dead'? As far as I can tell, it means that Tcl developers do not use Debian to
install debug builds and documentation.

~~~
alexkarta
I thought, it is quite clear from the graph that tcl, despite of many
pessimists, is alive. It is still popular and has positive tendencies. Now,
tcl 8.6 is more popular, then tcl 8.5 was
([https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=tcl8.5](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=tcl8.5)).
I understand that popcon is not perfect for such estimations, but I feel the
same tendencies.

~~~
dalke
If I understand it correctly, you used a counter-factual title 'TCL is dead'
(note also the non-convention capitalization - it should be 'Tcl'), and
assumed that a good number of people on HN would understand 1) it was
satirical, 2) the need for counter-pessimists, 3) the context in which to
understand the numbers shown, and 4) whatever 'popcon' means.

I - and I'll add that I've published papers on using Tcl for molecular
graphics, in software which still has 10K+ users - don't have any of that
understanding. I know Tcl is still active, if a minority language, and is a
good fit for some niches. (One of which is regression testing, with the SQLite
test suite being perhaps the most famous.)

~~~
alexkarta
Ok, thank you. "10K+ users" is great and promising fact. After 5+ years of
active python developing, I have decided to move to Tcl (you are right, "TCL"
looks really wrong). I feel this language is fit to my tasks much better then
python

~~~
dalke
I haven't worked on the project for a while. I pulled up the 2011 survey
report at
[http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/survey/report2011/vmdsur...](http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/survey/report2011/vmdsurvey2011rep.pdf)
. There were 56,575 registered users then.

Mind you, I don't know how many of those people write scripts. Plus, VMD also
supports Python, though that was added years after Tcl.

Personally, I think Tcl is better for the types of scripting that the physical
scientists (biologist, chemists, etc.) - most of my user base - want to do.
However, as something they developed became more generally useful, I found I
couldn't easily tweak it to be part of the larger system. OTOH, while Python
is more complex than Tcl, I rarely feel the need to rewrite user code in
Python into C++ code, so there's a more smooth transition between non-
programmer code to experienced programmer code. That is one of the reasons I
switched to Python.

On the flip side, IPython and others have developed script-like meta-languages
which makes it easier to do some of the things that Tcl excels at.

