> I would prefer to use Python but can't deny how popular Tcl is, as > mentioned above, so my question is why wasn't Python selected by > these companies as the choice of scripting languages for their > product?
I think this question needs to be answered on a case-by-case basis, but my guess is that it is in most cases historical. Work on Tcl started in 1988, and it was the first (major?) embeddable scripting language (that is also free software etc). Python wasn't released until 1991, and wasn't first recognized as being just as easily embeddable (and I think early releases weren't as easily embeddable as today's Python is). Tcl's original objective was to support circuit design, so people in that field clearly knew that Tcl worked, but they were likely unaware of any alternatives (or else the future of these alternatives may have been uncertain). So at that time, Tcl would have been the obvious (because only) choice. Now these products are stuck with Tcl, and redoing all the work (including the existing extension modules!) in a different programming language would be a lot of work. Regards, Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
