Jim Tcl version 0.78

http://jim.tcl.tk/index.html/doc/www/www/news/

by vetelko • 8 years ago

140 25 8 years ago

jim.tcl.tk

antirez5• 8 years ago

I started this project many years ago, and later abandoned it. Fortunately the project found another gentle and capable father that developed it for years and put it into a useful niche: embedded systems. However Jim Tcl is still, for me, a milestone of my programming life. It was the first time that, inspired by the Tcl internals, I started to realize how to write clean C code using better abstractions. It's awesome to see the project still alive, thank you Steve.

shakna• 8 years ago

Jim is supported. If you need commercial software, contact the original author at 'antirez@gmail.com' or the current maintainer at 'steveb@workware.net.au'.

Do you get many support emails, still?

antirez5• 8 years ago

Not much but a few questions from time to time, I don't reply most of the times unfortunately... I receive a lot more emails about hping (!).

marktangotango• 8 years ago

I always wondered why you used lua embedded into redis instead of tcl? Has that been written about before?

antirez5• 8 years ago

Because I thought it was not a good idea to script Redis using an opinionated language as Tcl. Lua is a lot more "algol like", more understandable to the casual script writer.

EDIT: However there is an even more important thing that resembles Tcl in Redis: the commands you send to the server to alter the data set are very similar to Tcl commands.

sitkack• 8 years ago

For the Tcl internals, was this John Ousterhout's code or some other codebase? Have you read his new (ish) book on Software Design? [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Software-Design-John-Ouste...

antirez5• 8 years ago

Yep it was the original JO code base, but I think that when I read it (it was already Tcl 8) a lot of other people had rewritten major parts, but the standard and quality were set I guess, and also the core team was composed of people that knew how to write code. About the new book: ordered it via Amazon, but Amazon Italy for some time now for small things use the local postal service, that always fails, so it returned back... to Amazon. I'll have to purchase it again.

jwilk• 8 years ago

Why is it called "Jim"?

w8rbt• 8 years ago

Maybe a play on words? Many people pronounce Tcl as tickle. Jim Tcl, George Dickel?

If so, they should have named it George Tcl. Jim is known for another whiskey.

KasianFranks• 8 years ago

I remember packaging and developing for the Tcl interpreter within Tivo boxes and set top boxes a while ago. The footprint was small back then, 10k is amazing. Great work.

olakease• 8 years ago

I heard many times about tcl or tcl/tk. Never paid attention until today. I really liked the language but looks like kind of dead to me. Last tclkit version is 8 years old. I tried to compile a tcl/tk application to an executable file and most of the websites explaining the process pointed to broken links (other docs, executables, etc).

Is tcl/tk still alive?

petre• 8 years ago

It's still used in applications that just work and boringly continue to do so. Like the SQLite test suite or MacPorts or Expect. Eurocontrol also uses it for air traffic control.

https://wiki.tcl.tk/37389

kryptiskt• 8 years ago

It's used a lot in the electronics industry for scripting testing and debugging.

zero_intp• 8 years ago

I still deal with it in telecom. No one wants to abandon in-place hardware infrastructure that the business community still supports.

lilyball• 8 years ago

Tcl/Tk doesn't have the cachet that newer programming languages do, but it certainly still works and is a pretty neat language, and now would be a great time to have a Tcl renaissance.

SQLite• 8 years ago

Tcl/Tk is very much alive, and actively maintained. See the check-in history at https://core.tcl.tk/tcl/timeline (Tcl) and https://core.tcl.tk/tk/timeline (Tk). There are annual conferences for developers and users - one in Munich this year (http://www.eurotcl.eu/) and another in Houston (https://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2018/index.html).

andrewshadura• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure TclKits are still being regularly built, I guess you were looking in a wrong place.

mdaniel• 8 years ago

If you've ever typed `git gui` or `gitk`, then you're using Tcl/Tk

https://git-scm.com/docs/git-gui and http://repo.or.cz/git-gui.git/tree/gitgui-0.21.0:/lib

https://git-scm.com/docs/gitk

Jim Tcl version 0.78

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