# Tcl/Tk

61 Hacker News commenters recommended Tcl/Tk and 21 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 15 years (5 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free, small cross-platform GUI toolkit people use to build quick tools and frontends for scripts. Critics say its look is dated and it lacks modern widgets.

## Why people recommend it

- Quick GUIs for small tools (7 comments): "The biggest early selling point of Tcl was Tk, as a relatively easy way to make good-enough GUI programs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899756)) "the whole point of Tcl/Tk is to allow easy creation of small little tools and apps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47021818)) "for writing a simple app with a GUI, I'd suggest that Tcl/Tk is hard to beat" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47318066))
- Cross-platform from one codebase (5 comments): "the TCL/Tk dependencies will straightly run on both XP, Mac, BSD and GNU/Linux with no propietary chains ever" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46570430)) "gold standard of stability, pragmatism, and lightweight cross-platform development" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49897559)) "pretty portable (should mostly work on every platform with minor changes)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47895352))
- Built-in scripting, introspective, extensible (3 comments): "Tk worked so well precisely because a real scripting language was part of its design from day one" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870736)) "it is extremely introspective with the ability to modify the language from within itself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46573012)) "One can create amazing ergonomic scripting APIs in TCL; I've done that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49900527))
- Lightweight and battle-tested stability (2 comments): "gold standard of stability, pragmatism, and lightweight cross-platform development" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49897559)) "Super easy to use, fast, almost zero ram usage and battle tested for 2 decades." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47059401))

## What people warn about

- Dated, ugly look (3 comments): "it feels very outdated compared to the reactive type of GUI's we have today" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517643)) "Which had the ugliness problem then, although it is a lot better now." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47437692)) "UI was so bloody ugly it was embarassing to show to any other user" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320985))
- Missing modern widgets and features (2 comments): "Tk (no browser component, no drag'n'drop, at least from Tkinter)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48006069)) "for little visualizations its just fine, certainly not AAA" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899681))
- Slow and large footprint (2 comments): "It will crawl against pure Win32/XLib under a Pentium 90 if everything it's a TK window" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47662693)) "I take issue with the only 100 MB footprint, that is still pretty big" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49516229))
- Disliked UIs built in Tcl (2 comments): "everyone I know (myself included) absolutely hate working with it in VLSI CAD tools" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899469)) "replace all your apps with some horrible Tcl/Tk and .NET interface" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721867))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Qt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qt.md): 191 recommend
- [GTK](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gtk.md): 85 recommend
- [Windows Forms](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winforms.md): 76 recommend
- [SwiftUI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/swiftui.md): 75 recommend
- [Avalonia UI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/avalonia.md): 51 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Tcl/Tk", https://hackerapproved.com/p/tcl-tk/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).