
Realm of Racket - Bootvis
http://nostarch.com/realmofracket
======
tsm
I'm a Common Lisp programmer, and am beginning to get tired of phrases like
"But while Racket retains the functional goodness of Lisp, ...". It's becoming
increasingly dishonest to peddle Lisp as a functional language that stands in
contrast to, say, Ruby or Python or what have you. Yes, Lisp has very
functional roots. But that was fifty years ago. The Lisp of the past two or
three decades is fully multi-paradigmatic. It supports a functional style, but
it supports other styles (object-oriented, imperative, ...) just as well if
not better. Haskell is functional. ML is functional. Heck, Clojure is
functional. If my only attraction to Lisp was FP I'd be using one of those
languages instead.

That said, lest I be perceived as too negative, I am very excited that this
book is being published. Racket has always stricken me as very clean and
friendly (two adjectives less applicable to CL), and advancing Lisp enthusiasm
in any form is never a bad thing. Cheers!

~~~
gcr

        The Lisp of the past two or three decades is
        fully multi-paradigmatic. It supports a
        functional style...
    

Then, by your definition, it's not dishonest to say that "Racket retains the
functional goodness of Lisp."

I don't understand. What's the problem?

~~~
tsm
It's not incorrect, just misleading. If I made a Python descendant named Monty
and said, "Monty retains the functional goodness of Python", wouldn't you give
me flack since that's not the main point of Python?

What if I said C++ retained the imperative goodness of C?

------
shaunxcode
Apparently on sale today with coupon code RACKETEERS making it like 23.97 for
both print and ebook! I feel like I am a marketing shill or something but for
real that is a great deal and I have been looking for a racket/scheme book to
use for teaching!

 _edit_ To follow up - got the book and have been reading through it. Already
super impressed with the tone, pictures, lisp history lesson, and particularly
the cartoon of guy and gerry!

~~~
syntacticsugar
This is totally mega uber awesome as I am br0k3 right now and this saved me
mega $$$$$. TY Shaun. My code mate Luis Borjas will appreciate this also.
Maybe I should even forward this to the Hacker School students.

------
brudgers
The best way to describe Racket is as an ecosystem. The analogy I would make:

    
    
       EMACS : text editor
       Racket : programming language
    

This is to say that Racket comes with enough batteries to make it a
platform...or at least Racket is striving to achieve cradle-to-grave coverage.
It doesn't just come with tutorials, but a complete programming course - _How
to Design Programs._

It comes with tools for building languages, creating presentations, and
writing documents. No email, though (yet).

Racketeers are eating their own dog food. The Racket Way video gives a good
introduction:
[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Racket](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Racket)

~~~
takikawa
> No email, though (yet).

Actually, it does do e-mail. :)
[https://github.com/mflatt/sirmail](https://github.com/mflatt/sirmail)

Or if you want SMTP/IMAP libraries, you can look here: [http://docs.racket-
lang.org/net/](http://docs.racket-lang.org/net/)

~~~
brudgers
Once again, JMZ is proves prophetic.

~~~
marcocampos
JWZ ;)

~~~
brudgers
Some people see the valleys, others the mountains?

------
incision
Nice.

No Starch is probably my current favorite tech book publisher, I've yet to run
across anything less than great under their label and I've been using DrRacket
recently to work through SICP.

------
omaranto
There's a new release of Racket to go along with the book. It comes with a
library ("collection" in racket-speak) with the source code of the book
examples. [http://blog.racket-
lang.org/2013/06/racket-v535.html](http://blog.racket-
lang.org/2013/06/racket-v535.html)

~~~
derengel
yeah :)

I couldn't resist getting on with the ebook yesterday and noticed my 5.3.4
install didn't have the realm dir.

------
mxBug
Aha !! Finally a Racket book that my pupils will pay attention to...

They've complained that textbooks and courses often don't teach how to build
anything directly useful, but video games? Suddenly, no holds barred.

------
binarycrusader
As someone that bought and thoroughly enjoyed the "Land of Lisp", is there a
point to also buying this book?

Is Racket so much better that it's worth learning compared to Haskell, Erlang,
Go, etc. ?

Can someone comment on what unique insight or benefit I might gain from
learning Racket and from this book?

~~~
kaoD
If you're going to put the effort, I'd choose Clojure. It's still a Lisp but a
lot less awkward than most dialects and has a very rich ecosystem (and Java
interop, which is both good and bad).

------
rohall
I'm tempted to buy this for friends. I started seriously programming after
taking a class taught by Fellesien using How to Design Programs
([http://htdp.org/](http://htdp.org/))

~~~
xiaomai
For anyone else looking to take a course like that, Coursera has a course on
htdp right now:
[https://class.coursera.org/programdesign-001/class](https://class.coursera.org/programdesign-001/class)

------
Mikeb85
Just like Land of Lisp (also written by Conrad Barski). Not a bad thing.

~~~
muuh-gnu
It is not just like Land of Lisp, it seems to be just Land of Lisp ported to
Racket by a group of students supervised by Conrad Barski and Matthias
Felleisen. Barski and Felleisen arent even credited as the primary authors of
the book.

~~~
matthias_f
Realm of Racket (ROAR) is not a translation of Land of Lisp, but it is heavily
inspired by LOL. Our emphasis is on readers who have done some programming,
possibly in Racket-based teaching languages but not necessarily so, and who
wish to see the beginnings of Racket. You may wish to check out the sample
chapter on Hungry Henry and compare ROAR to LOL before you buy. Or borrow the
book from a friend to see how ROAR ends in a chapter on #lang.

The author team really consists of eight students and two 'old' people: David
Van Horn and myself. As is tradition in my lab, young people go first and
'old' people come last on an author list. Everyone knows us already anyway.

Enjoy! -- Matthias

~~~
derengel
Hi, is the book suited for people with no functional programming experience?

~~~
samth
Yes, definitely.

------
Nekorosu
The site states "PDF, Mobi, and ePub" but I can see only pdf download link.
I'm a little disappointed.

~~~
Nekorosu
I'm happy now. The links to ePub and Mobi will follow soon.

------
psutor
"Land of Lisp" is actually what turned me on to PG/HN/startups a few years
ago. I believe there was a passing mention of PG somewhere near the beginning
and that got me started reading essays.

I am very excited for this book as I do prefer the cleanliness of Scheme to
CL.

------
TY
Quite surprised by a high cost of shipping a printed book to Canada - $19.95
per item that almost doubles the cost of the whole purchase. eBook it is...

~~~
Tortoise
Amazon.ca has the book for CDN$ 26.43 (free shipping).
[http://www.amazon.ca/Realm-Racket-Learn-Program-
Game/dp/1593...](http://www.amazon.ca/Realm-Racket-Learn-Program-
Game/dp/1593274912/)

------
raphinou
Looks interesting indeed. However, i am not sure i will buy it due to the
price of the ebook-only option, which is what i am interested in.

~~~
JoelMcCracken
See the comment above for a coupon code!

------
systems
the book website/author claims racket to be "the most unique programming
language in the world"?

Is it really, I know that racket is a scheme implementation, I thought scheme
is to lisp what java is to c++, a saner less powerful version

[http://realmofracket.com/about.html](http://realmofracket.com/about.html)

~~~
gecko
I actually get where the author's coming from.

While it's tempting to think of Racket as a Scheme implementation, and that
was at one time true, the situation these days is quite different. It's a lot
more accurate to say that Racket ships with a Scheme-like default language
(and an actual R5RS-compatible Scheme), but that it's _actually_ a wonderful
language toolkit. Racket has the ability for individual modules to use their
own syntax. Not macros; full-fledged syntax. Racket ships with several Lisp-
like syntaxes, but it also ships with Datalog and ALGOL-68. And this is very
much unique to Racket.

~~~
TylerE
So sort of an LLVM for languages that failed to gain acceptance outside of
academia?

~~~
soegaard
No. See
[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Racket](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Racket)

------
ripter
The EBook is a PDF if you buy the combo. I wouldn't have bought it if I
resized that.

~~~
tylero
We'll be posting the EPUB and MOBI files shortly. You'll get those soon.

~~~
ripter
Ah, that makes it better. I didn't see anything when I got the files that said
the other formats would be available soon.

Looking back at the site it only says it before you click buy. I didn't read
the description before I started the checkout.

------
nixpulvis
Excited to buy this book and start seeing peers using it. Well done guys.

