So I started playing with TCL for the first time this weekend after seeing this post, and here are my thoughts. I think the language is fun and much different than I’m used to, but my biggest challenge so far is just getting packages installed. There seems to be no current, modern, maintained package manager or central repository, and to do basic stuff like stand up a web server requires compiling from C source. Kinda brutal. TclHttpd failed to compile with TCL 8.6 installed because I guess there was some change in APIs. I didn’t bother spending time figuring out how to patch the C code to make it work because that’s getting in for more than I bargained for.<p>It’s too bad there’s not a simple way to get up and running with packages because for me so far that had been the biggest barrier to entry / deterrent. Also, I wanted to create a ES256 JWT but there’s no good way to do that apparently, due to the dated ecosystem, whereas in other languages this sort of this is just a package install away. I found a third-party solution in the form of Chilkat software but it costs $300 to license.<p>So overall while I think TCL is fun, I can see why people don’t choose it when they want to be productive fast and not have to fuss around with deeply manual things that are commonplace and quick in other languages.