FYI, Tcl has pretty good mail capabilities through TclLib, including pop3 and nntp support. Doesn't look like IMAP is there. <a href=
http://tcl.activestate.com/software/tcllib/>
http://tcl.activestate.com/software/tcllib/</a>.
<p>
<i>
"Most of the learning is not about a programming language its about software engineering."
</i>
</p>
<p>Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. That is _right_. Picking up a programming language on my own is _much_ easier than trying to pick up good software engineering on my own. Too many universites shove Java (or more recently C#) down their student's throats just because it's fashionable. IMHO Java is a terrible first language. They end up spending most of the time in their introductory CS classes dealing with the sheer complexity of the language, hence not having time to learn what's truly important.