The Open Source Zone

I've read other books written by the authors of the language, and found them to be lacking. But this author's book is really well organized, thoughtful, clear, and has great explanations. I was up and running creating widgets, etc. in a matter of no time.

I think this book is more of an instructional guide (and a damn good one too), but I don't believe it is oriented as a reference guide. I know that there were a few gripes on this should be both, but I wouldn't want that. Technology changes, so I prefer references to remain online. Gone are the days to cart a wheel-barrel of reference material for a given project, only to be obsoleted in a few years.

This book opened the doors to the great wonderful world of Tcl/Tk. And I am confident it will help others in years to come.

This is a very good book to learn tcl/tk. It is a little dated, but the language is covered very well. Start with this one.

I read this book in a matter of days. It flies by quite fast. It lacks examples but I thought it gave me enough information to be able to figure out the other things. Besides by working out problems do you learn best and this book gives you the basics to do that. Explains well and doesn't go on and on and on. Good starter if you want to learn Tcl/Tk

This book is very disappointing to use. One one hand, it is well written, and very clear to understand. But on the other hand, it contains *very* little information, almost everything I needed I had to find on the net, or search the man pages. It claims "not to be a reference". Then why buy it at all! I'd rather buy a book which teaches the material *and* contains all the information I need.

Although more detailed books like Welch's 'Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk' are very useful, Ousterhout's original book is still the best way to learn the language. His style is clear and concise, and he covers the core of the language with good examples and thorough explanatory text.<p>The layout is clean and easy to read, without any space wasted on fancy graphics or eye-candy. Instead, you get clear tables laying out what happens, or listing the commands in a certain functionality area. For example, page 122 has a table I've gone back to many times that lists the different return values from catch.<p>Even though I have and use other Tcl books, when I just want to check a point of syntax or verify functionality, this is the one I go to. It's an invaluable book for a Tcl/Tk developer.