<p> Tcl is an interesting language that does many things "wrong", especially if you're coming from a LISP perspective, and especially-especially if you're coming from a Scheme perspective. Examples are all over the C2 wiki, but probably <a href="https://wiki.c2.com/?DynamicStringsVsFunctional">DynamicStringsVsFunctional</a> is the epicenter.</p>
<p>It also forms an important part of modern Scheme history, as the <a href="https://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/">Tcl War</a> led to the creation of <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/">Guile</a>.</p>
<p>What happened after that? <a href="https://journal.dedasys.com/2010/03/30/where-tcl-and-tk-went-wrong/">Where Tcl and Tk went wrong, by David N Welton</a></p>
<p>TL;DL: Tcl was successful because it found its niche as a lightweight yet capable language able to both integrate and be integrated with C code, but it fell behind on Tk look-and-feel compared to GNOME and KDE and also on other mainstream development phenomena, it ossified because it was afraid to upset its installed base, it got stuck between not-slim-enough and not-featureful-enough, the syntax is too weird, and it spiraled into losing touch with the rest of the free software world, which ultimately also affected business use.</p>
<h2 id="further-notes">Further notes</h2>
<ul>
<li>Guile (again) faces several of these same challenges.</li>
<li>Haskell tries to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/39qx15/is_this_the_right_way_to_understand_haskells/">avoid success at all costs</a>, in order to not lose the freedom to improve the language.</li>
<li><a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html">Python</a> and <a href="https://www.perltk.org/">Perl</a> both have Tk integrations and Python's IDLE is even implemented in it. Lua had <a href="https://tset.de/ltcltk/index.html">ltk</a>, but it's no longer maintained. There is even a <a href="https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/tcltk/versions/3.4.1">Tcl/Tk package for R</a>.</li>
<li>Ousterhout <a href="https://www.huecker.com/msw/ousterhout.shtml">pronounces it OH-stir-howt</a>, which may or may not be how I pronounced it. I think the guttural sound may be reserved for the Dutch "G" and have nothing to do with "H".</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="potential-episodes">Potential episodes</h2>
<ul>
<li>Fossil</li>
<li>Tcl</li>
</ul>
