Updated 2016-01-15 15:08:16 by HolgerJ ▲

Holger Jakobs - mailto:holger@jakobs.com, see also http://www.jakobs.com and http://plausibolo.de

I live in Bergisch Gladbach http://www.bergischgladbach.de close to Köln http://www.koeln.de in Germany teaching several IT related subjects. Up to September 2013 full-time at b.i.b. International College http://www.bg.bib.de, but since then as a freelancer. My business page (page only in German, but my profile is in English) is http://plausibolo.de

You find my new (as of 2015) Guard Tour System (based on Android phones with NFC and an app written in Java as well as a server and a desktop client written in Tcl/Tk) at http://wks.plausibolo.de

I'm into

  • Tcl/Tk -- not into Perl or Python
  • LaTeX -- not into Word
  • PostgreSQL -- not into MySQL
  • Linux -- not into Windows
  • LibreOffice -- not into M$ Office
  • Fossil -- not into Git

because I prefer the smarter solutions.

Most of my programming I do with Tcl/Tk, because I believe it is the easiest way to getting things done.

What I would like to have in Tcl/Tk is better support for sorting Unicode according to language-dependent rules instead of following the numerical order of the glyphs. see lsort and http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr10/

Of course I have tried lots of programming languages:

  • Basic (Wang, Commodore, Simon's Basic) - it's been a long time!
  • FORTRAN - had to!
  • COBOL - had to, luckily only a little!
  • Pascal (Turbo, Professional) - its time is really over!
  • Modula-2 (JPI) - was my favourite for years! Took me some time to equip it with the 'widgets' (in text mode, of course) I needed. Was not very useful with Windows, only DOS.
  • C - took me quite some time to get used to what it all lacks. As a Modula-2-Programmer you are used to a more structured work. It's a pity that Modula-2 lost and C won.
  • C++ - at least some good ideas of Modula-2 came back here. Still too complicated building cross-platform GUIs. Maybe I'll try wxwidgets one day. Great as a language for jobs where no GUI is needed. Has improved a lot since C++11.
  • Realizer - was once a competitor of MS Visual Basic by Computer Associates. Not very good.
  • Tcl/Tk - the best and most complete kit of useful things I ever discovered
  • Java - is just too complicated, too deeply nested object hierarchy, although lots of useful classes. I use it for developing native Android apps.
  • JavaScripts - only for very little programming of Web pages, has improved a lot and has some good ideas, but JSON is still far more complex than Tcl's dict without delivering more.
  • PHP - only for two little jobs with MySQL (shudder!!) where nothing else was available
  • Python - attended a 5-day seminar in 2015. It's really not bad, and since it's so much in demand, I might do some jobs with it soon.

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