Pier Fumagalli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: As long as we're talking about language things, I'm going to toot the Tcl horn some:-)
> I've never seen anyone saying that the "code-reuse" concept applies > only to Java code, it is nice to open your eyes and see that Java > can be the glue for PERL, JavaScript, Java, and C all together. At > least, that's my vision, otherwise I wouldn't have learned the Java > Native Interface by heart over the past 6 years... The Tcl language has been a wonderful glue for the past... oh, more than 10 years. In fact, it was designed for that. Even if you're not crazy about the language itself (it won't win any awards from computer scientists... err, well, besides the ACM:-), have a look at the C API. It's documented beautifully, with man pages for each function. The source code is, in general, worth a look. I think it's written very well, and is a pleasure to read. It is, of course, WORA, with regards to the main language *and* the Tk graphical toolkit, but doesn't shy away from its origins as a glue language. There are all kinds of connectors to other packages - Tclx for posix calls, tclblend for a JNI interface (even Tcl implemented in Java - Jacl), XML, SOAP, databases, and so on. And if you want, you can use its sandbox to run code in a place where it won't do any harm. Oh yeah, it has expect, too, which is kind of ugly, but sometimes glue isn't pretty. It's also really easy to use as a command language, controlling various bits of other, larger, C systems. You can embed, it, extend it, push it this way and that - even take the source and hack on it, because the implementation is free software. I think I like that world view more, even if sometimes the results aren't so elegant. I think Lisp has a lot more going for it than Java, in some ways, but they really seem to suffer from the "don't pollute it" syndrome, down to the fact that a lot of them still harbor dreams of a LispOS. My two cents, -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/ Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
