[severely OT] Tcl vs Perl

[psp@printwareinc.com (Phil Plumbo)]

From the my-religion-is-better-than-yours dept.: I would like to hear
informed opinions on the relative merits of perl vs Tcl as the programming
language of choice for an open-source GUI project now forming.

The guy behind this project has developed a very nice, generalized GUI for
machine tool control, but has reached a dead end. The protoype was written
in VB under Windows. He wants to port to linux so he can use rtlinux and
also to interface with the killer CNC app 'NIST EMC', a linux-based CNC
back-end that is well-established.

He is looking at a total rewrite.  There is a large base of Tcl code
associated with NIST EMC, and all of the current GUIs are written in Tcl.
The logical choice would seem to be to use Tcl.

He would, however, prefer to use perl/Tk. In his words:

  "One of the major reasons Im stopping the work on my VB program is that
  the underlying data structure is not good. I cannot use the VB Object
  stuff, since my .dll  limits me to the 16bit VB, so that forces just
  about everything to be global variables, since procedures can only
  return a single value. I have done some reading on Tcl/tk and find the
  same problems.

  I would much prefer to write in Perl/Tk. All the data handing could then
  be object oriented and much more robust. We could also use the Perl
  module mechanisms to add code. 

  Im very sure that the success of CPNC will depend heavily on the data
  structure under it. I dont think Tcl will give us the structure we need."

This sounds a little bogus to me. I don't have much experience with Tcl, but
I don't see why it would limit one's choice of data structure that much.
Comments? 










Philip S. Plumbo           | Printware, Inc.
psp@printwareinc.com       | 1270 Eagan Industrial Rd. | voice: 651-456-1400
http://printwareinc.com    | St. Paul, MN 55121  USA   |   fax: 651-454-3684