Top ten reasons why people use Tcl today

There are many different reasons why people use Tcl but most of them fall into just a few categories. Here are the top ten reasons why people use Tcl today.

1. Rapid development
2. Graphical user interfaces
3. Cross-platform applications
4. Extensible applications
5. Flexible integration
6. Ready for the enterprise
7. Testing
8. Easy to learn
9. Network-aware applications
10. The Tcl community
11. BONUS: It's free!

1. Rapid development
The most important reason why people use Tcl is that it gets their job done faster. In many cases you can implement applications 5-10x faster with Tcl than with other languages, especially if the application involves GUIs, string-handling, or integration. Once an application is
built in Tcl, it can also be evolved rapidly to meet changing needs.

2. Graphical user interfaces With its Tk toolkit, Tcl provides facilities for creating GUIs that
are incredibly simple yet remarkably powerful. For example, the Tk canvas widget makes it easy to create displays with graphics, yet it also provides powerful facilities such as bindings and tags. The text widget provides sophisticated hypertext capabilities and more. No other toolkit has the same combination of simplicity and power. Tcl attracted much of its early following because it was the only sane way to create user interfaces under Unix; now it provides these same benefits on Windows and Macintosh platforms too.

3. Cross-platform applications Tcl runs on Windows (95 and NT), Macintosh, and nearly every
imaginable Unix platform. This makes it an outstanding tool for creating cross-platform applications. For example, the same Tcl script can run on Unix, Windows, and Macintosh and display a graphical user interface; the GUI will have a different look and feel on each platform, to match the user's expectations for that platform. Because it runs on all major platforms Tcl provides an excellent management and integration tool for mixed environments, such as those with Windows desktops and Unix servers.

4. Extensible applications If you want to create a powerful application that can be scripted and
extended by its users and modified in the field, you'll need to include an interpreted scripting language in the application. Tcl is unmatched for this purpose. The Tcl interpreter was designed from the start to be embedded in a variety of applications. It is easy to incorporate Tcl into an application, and the Tcl interpreter melds naturally with the application, almost as if the Tcl language were designed exclusively for that particular application.

5. Flexible integration
With Tcl it is easy to coordinate existing components and applications so that they work together effectively. For example, it is easy to use Tcl as a control language for special-purpose hardware and protocols, add a GUI or network interface to a legacy application, or integrate new Java applications with legacy code in C or C++. This makes Tcl a powerful tool in areas such as network management and factory automation.

6. Ready for the enterprise With the Tcl 8.1 release, Tcl became the first (and only) scripting
language suitable for large server applications and other mission-critical enterprise uses. The benefits of scripting, such as rapid development, flexible evolution, and easy integration, have been known for years, but until Tcl 8.1 no scripting language provided all the facilities needed for enterprise applications, which include internationalization, thread safety, cross-platform portability, great GUI capabilities, embeddability, Internet support, and database access.
Tcl 8.1 added internationalization and thread safety, making Tcl the first scripting language to meet all these requirements and bring the benefits of scripting to the enterprise.

7. Testing
Tcl is an ideal language to use for automated hardware and software testing, and it may well be the dominant language used for this purpose. With Tcl you can easily connect to testing hardware or internal APIs of an application, invoke test functions, check the results, and report
errors. Tcl's interpreted implementation allows tests to be created rapidly, and the tests can be saved as Tcl script files to reuse for regression testing. If you are testing a software application, Tcl allows you to connect directly to lower-level APIs within the application, which provides much more precise and complete testing.

8. Easy to learn
Tcl is a very simple language. Experienced programmers can learn Tcl and produce their first interesting application in just a few hours or days. Casual programmers can also learn Tcl quickly. (Lesson 1) Tcl is often used in situations where experienced programmers create a base set of facilities, and more casual programmers write Tcl scripts to customize those facilities, create business rules, etc.

9. Network-aware applications
No platform has easier to use networking facilities than Tcl. Servers and clients can be created in a few minutes with just a few lines of code. (Example) Tcl provides a great way to add network interfaces to legacy applications.

10. The Tcl community
Another attractive reason for using Tcl is the large and helpful community of Tcl users and developers. The Tcl community is a constant source of ideas, free extensions, applications, and technical support.

11 BONUS: It's free!