Why does darwinports developers choose the tcl/tk for darwinports project?

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

On Dec 29, 2006, at 3:35 PM, Daniel J. Luke wrote:

> On Dec 29, 2006, at 2:43 PM, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
>> No offense, but I think it's "just you".
>
> Despite how it's been a repeated complaint over time on the mailing  
> list? :)

I did state fairly clearly that Tcl obviously wasn't as popular or  
sexy, so sure, it stands to reason that we're going to see "Hey, why  
didn't you choose a more popular/sexy implementation language!" on  
the mailing list from time to time.   Just as clearly, however, it's  
not unpopular or unsexy enough for some Ruby advocate to go re- 
implement MacPorts in that language, so this whole thread appears to  
be largely academic.  If somebody feels strongly enough about the  
issue to actually come up with a replacement, they should do so.  If  
they don't feel that strongly, then what we have is obviously good  
enough and there's no point debating the merits of Tcl if the only  
incentive is language bashing since there are better forums for pure  
language bashing than macports-dev.

>> If MacPorts were written in Python, you'd have Python haters  
>> jumping up and down saying that if were only written in Ruby,  
>> they'd be happy to contribute to it.   If it were written in Ruby,  
>> you'd have Ruby haters saying the same thing.
>
> Perhaps, but in either case the pool of people who are familiar  
> with the language is probably greater than the pool of people who  
> are familiar with tcl.

And, just to reinforce the point I made above, if someone from that  
pool would care to sit down and write a better software management  
system than macports, I think it would be well received since  
macports (or fink or gentoo or pkgsrc or ...) is clearly not the last  
word in software husbandry.  I think the last word is quite a ways  
off from being written, in fact, given all the limitations that  
people have run into while trying to use those systems.  The world is  
ready for a revolutionary approach, so bring it on. :-)

>> If it were written in Perl, well, nobody at all would be able to  
>> read the code and even the maintainers wouldn't know what it  
>> did. :-)   [OK, sorry, I couldn't resist].
>
> It's possible to write good perl (just as it's possible to write  
> difficult to maintain code in any other language), and it's silly  
> to blame the language. [The International Obfuscated C Code Contest  
> started in 1984, perl wasn't even released by Larry Wall until 1987].

That was a joke, son.  Not meant to be taken seriously.  :)

- Jordan