Tcl for Rubyists
by Sam Stephenson
One of my favorite things about the Ruby community is that its members aren't afraid of looking to
other languages for inspiration. I hope to continue that tradition by giving an overview of Tcl --
a dynamic, introspective, and often misunderstood langauge -- from a Rubyist's perspective.
I'll start with a brief introduction to Tcl itself, then delve into Tcl's introspective
capabilities. Next I'll show how you can use introspection to add Ruby- and Scheme-like features to
the language. I'll also demonstrate how to augment built-in commands and create DSLs. Finally,
I'll show how to embed a Tcl interpreter into Ruby and expose Ruby methods as Tcl commands.
About Sam Stephenson
Sam is a fan of dynamic languages who writes Ruby software for 37signals in Chicago.