> Tcl, however, requires a function call to access an array index, resulting in nested function calls with magic numbers for the simplest expressions:

I do understand how that one can be frustrating to a newbie, but I can't fault that implementation choice when thinking about Tcl as a "Lisp but it's strings".

> Then there isn't any static type checking so you have to run code to see if it would work; the shape of a return may surprise you. Connecting to hardware may be your only opportunity to exercise certain code paths.

This, though, yeah. I feel this in my whole body. I haven't checked out Tcl 9.0 to see how it's changed, but Tcl 8.6's abbreviated compilation phase definitely doesn't leave any room for type much type inference ahead-of-time.

> sentinels

Tangential, but man I wish Tcl had `gensym` out of the box. That alone was enough to start my own programming language over a decade ago.

Everything else, I largely agree with. Short of a hard fork or the Tcl team splitting their time between maintaining for the sake of EDA vendors, and trying different approaches, I don't see much changing.

I really appreciate the time you took to share your experiences here.