As expected, this thread has proven to have absolutely nothing of relevance
to most of the _MANY_ newsgroups to which it was posted. If you must continue
this thread, please limit your post to the relevant subset, e.g. for the
following post it is (at most) relevant to comp.lang.{tcl,perl,smalltalk}.
In general, if you find yourself tempted to include more than 2 or 3
technical newsgroups, please _restrain_ yourself. The chance that your
posting is appropriate to more than 2 or 3 is virtually NIL.
Geoff Clemm
In article <·····················@crchha98.bnr.ca> ·······@crchha98.bnr.ca (Gregory Graha) writes:
From: ·······@crchha98.bnr.ca (Gregory Graha)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.clos,comp.lang.dylan,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.icon,comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.prolog,comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.tcl,comp.lang.perl
Date: 19 Sep 1995 03:20:42 GMT
Organization: Bell Northern Research, Richardson, TX.
In article <·······················@rover.rmii.com> ······@healthcare.com
(Bryan Oakley) writes:
In article <··········@magus.cs.utah.edu>, ····@fast.cs.utah.edu (Harold
Carr) wrote:
> What do programmers who implement and use real programming languages
> like, Lisp, Prolog, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Icon, etc; use instead of TCL or
> PERL?
>
> (sounds like a straight line but I am really asking)
>
> Harold
Uh, Lisp, Prolog, Smalltalk, Eiffel, and Icon?
On a more serious note, what makes you think that users of Lisp, etc.
*don't* use TCL or PERL? What exactly do you mean by "use instead of TCL
or PERL"? Use for what? Programming? Perhaps they also use the Korn or
Bourne shell, python, C, FORTRAN, COBOL, awk, hypercard, and the list goes
on and on.
A valid issue to discuss, however, has to do with the fact that Tcl
and Perl were pretty much designed to enhance the C/Unix programming
environment. Their existance is a testement to the fact that C was
considered not suitable for the tasks Tcl and Perl were invented for.
Tcl was designed to provide a way to imbed a scripting language into a
tool so that the tool could be customized by the user without digging
into the C code and recompiling. Although I am new to Smalltalk, the
impression I get is that tools in a Smalltalk environment are
customized in Smalltalk. The browser makes it easier to deal with the
source, and subclassing makes it easier to reuse and customize. Also,
the interactive nature of Smalltalk is similar to Tcl.
Perl was designed to provide a lot of the high level tools that C
lacks, and to provide an interactive programming environment that is
more productive for quick jobs than compiled C. Again, these are
areas where Smalltalk already excels, with its rich class library and
interactive programming environment.
Now, I will admit that Tcl and Perl, have definately grown beyond
their original vision, and people are using them for all kinds of
things. Also, I know that Smalltalk is not the end-all, and there
will be cases where a Smalltalk programmer might want to use something
like Tcl or Perl. But in general, I think a Smalltalk programmer
would have less need for these kinds of tools than a C/C++ programmer.
--
Greg Graham
·······@bnr.ca
--
·····@bellcore.com