I ran the group working on Jacl and TclBlend at Sun.  Sun had several language projects at t
he time but it was becoming clear that Java was the big sucess and that you had better do so
mething Java related if you wanted last.  (Well that was the cynical view anyway.)  We also 
knew that Java really needed a scripting story - which is why we started the project.
 
At the time, however, Sun was in a hurry because Netscape who was the big player to adopt Ja
va was also working on a scripting language.  We were proposing to Sun management that Jacl 
would be just the ticket.  In the end, Bill Joy pushed for a deal with Netscape to name the 
language they were working on as JavaScript.
 
I think John O's critical stance of OO (that rubbed the Java guys the wrong way) and Tcl's l
ack of object oriented features was one of the biggest reasons something did not happen.  Th
ough I'm sure timing and other political things were also part of the mix - I certainly do n
ot claim to know the whole picture.  Though I do know that that decision marked the begining
 of the end of Tcl at Sun.

So I too find this interest in Jacl by Sun folks as ironic.
 
Another irony, (in my own humble opinion) is that it seems to me this effort is in a respons
e really to Microsoft's efforts to support dynamic languages.  MS is way ahead of Java at th
is point in supporting dynamic lanugages.  Sun is now playing catch-up to MS's lead...
 
Ray
 
________________________________

From: tcljava-dev-bounces@[...].net on behalf of Patrick Finnegan
Sent: Sun 2/18/2007 1:38 PM
To: tcljava-dev@[...].net
Subject: Re: [tcljava-dev] tcljava-dev Digest, Vol 5, Issue 3




> 
>  Of course, these things always contribute a little to the traditional
>  "we have the best-kept secret", or perhaps, "we have the largest
>  inferiority complex" that plagues the Tcl world.  One would like to
>  think that Tcl/Jacl wouldn't be relegated to the "etc." category in
>  lists such as this (from the Java One flyer).
> 

The greatest irony is that Tcl and JACL were originally developed by Sun and
then put out to grass.  The fact is dynamic language capability has been part
of the JVM since 1997.  Just look at the JACL source.  It has Sun copywrite
plastered all over the shop.    Just add the two JACL jar files to the
lib/ext directory of the Java SDK/JRE to enable dynamic class loading and hey
presto you have a built in scripting environment for JAVA.  I am amazed that
Java did not ship with built in JACL as standard.       

* BlendExtension.java --
 *
 *      This extension encapsulates the java::* commands.
 *
 * Copyright (c) 1997-1998 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

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