Roux is a thickening ingredient used in Gumbo. It binds together all of the ingredients and makes gumbo Gumbo.

I have to share this madness....

So, I have an existing system written in C++, Tcl, Postgres and Berkeley Db (for message queues). A new system will be mostly Java (with some Jython) and Berkeley Db. How do you integrate the two? (I have some parts of the old system that I want to reuse).

I am using TclBlend to decode a java object retrieved from a Berkeley DB queue (previously injected by a Java app) and then pass it to the legacy Tcl code that interfaces with Postgres.

Heck, while I'm at it, why not use Jacl to sling around the unit tests coded in Jython.

The scary thing is.. I'm not kidding...

How do you use Tcl as Roux?

-- Todd Coram

---

Why did you ditch Tcl for Java in the new system?

jcw knows a roux as a mixture of butter, flour, and water heated and used as a basis for sauces - and is always interested to hear how people pick languages and tools... and why/when some are ditched.

---

At the time (a year ago?) I had to go to Java due to lack of Tcl knowledge on the part of the developers. However, we never made it out of the gate (financial problems). My original choice of Tcl was pragmatic. The legacy code was in C++. For the rewrite: Java was the cool thang carrot for developers (I have seen some jr. programmers leap from a project because it used Tcl -- no job security and no buzzword compliancy). I was going to have the developers code the internals in Java and then I would use Tcl to sling the objects around. We were a small organization and if the whole (new) system was to be coded in Tcl, I would have been the only coder. Personally, I swore off Java since December 2000 (I was a Java Evangelist and instructor for 3 years prior to that). -- Todd Coram

---

With the economy where it is today, I think anyone with a job to offer can be picky about what they want. Wish I had a company as there are lots of good people I would love to give jobs too.

jcw - For a comment about Java, and SUV's, see Philip Greenspun's weblog [1] (caution: asbestos suit may be needed by some).

---