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Postings from July 2006
On Tue, 04 Jul 2006, Nicholas Clark wrote: > > As long as I'm running off at the mouth, I'd like to comment on > > backwards compatability. It seems every time I try to run a Python > > program or Java program, it completely fails with a stacktrace for > > reason of not having the exact right version installed. If Perl were > > really out of touch with users, it would have this problem too. > > [which to avoid any digression into slander or not of Python or Java, > I assume is subjective, but an accurate *perception*. In as much as > I'm assuming that objectively Python etc actually fails very > infrequently, but (for you at least) Perl does it so much less > frequently that Python's few failures are far more memorable.] While this may be true for Python, it is certainly not true for Tcl. Tcl has a very clearly defined API for internals and you cannot bypass this API from extensions. They have kept this API constant for the whole Tcl 8.x release series, and as a consequence all extensions are completely binary forward and backward compatible along all releases. While I don't care too much for the Tcl language itself, I've been envious of their clean internal abstractions for quite a while now. Cheers, -Jan