Well, I have been doing some programming in tcl and
after recognizing that my second edition book is rather old, I acquired
Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, 4th Edition. In there, within the chapter
about Namespaces, they talk about Object Systems and mentioned [incr Tcl] and
XOTcl; the latter one as a more recent development.
Granted, I am not experienced in objects, although
a couple of years ago I went back to a local community college for a nice Java
course where I learned about OO and concepts like Inheritance and Encapsulation.
So, needless to say, I was able to understand itcl right away and I am having
the hardest time understanding xotcl.
So, I gather that xotcl seems more versatil (and
hence more powerfull?)...is [incr tcl] good enough?
[incr tcl] seems easy (to
me, with my Java knowledge) to grasp and program. How does xotcl
compare?
I'm just having a hard time separating Objects and
Classes, each with its own definitions and methods, etc. By the way, the
soccer team example did not include anything on Objects, everything was
Classes...so, I was up for a surprise when they started to talk about Objects in
the same way they did about Classes. The following statements hit the nail
right on the head for me:
"This is possible (and not senseless) because of
the per-object specialization ability and the dual shape of a class, which is
at the same time object and class. Both lead to a seamless connection of the
run-time properties (the object features) and their descriptive properties
(the class features). It is possible to avoid the strict distinction between
them, known from static typed languages, like C++, Java,
etc."
Needless to say, I am having a hard time with the
first sentence from the quotation
above.
The xotcl toturial is 67 pages long, is it
standalone or do I require to know otcl before taking on xotcl?
Are there
learning alternatives for xotcl other than the tutorial mentioned above?
Are
67 pages enough? The book "[incr tcl/tk] from the Ground Up" is over 700 pages
long!
Any advice? Do you get a lot of questions like
these from newbies? Or am I speaking to the wrong crowd i.e., you all love xotcl
and think is easy to understand?
Thanks for any tips.
G.Salazar