

PLT Scheme being renamed to PLT Racket - JoelMcCracken
http://www.plt-racket.org/new-name.html

======
boskone
I've stated in the past the _only_ thing wrong with PLT Scheme was not enough
marketing.

PLT Racket is as evolved beyond standard Scheme as modern man from
Australopithecus.

So many rich areas of study are available for exploration. Just some of the
capabilities, not toy, but full robust capabilities, include:

\- Lazy \- Functional \- Reactive \- OO \- Macros (powerful, hygenic) \-
Delimited continuations \- Module system (dynamic)

Not too mention the basics, eye opening approaches to XML and Web, an IDE,
debugger, contracts, typed/dynamic language, jit, Android development, ... and
on and on.

The talent of the core PLT group is outstanding. Matthias Felleisen for
example was awarded an ACM Fellowship in 2006 for contributions to programming
languages and development environments. His academic publications are right up
there with the best out there, yet he spends as much time focused on the
foundational aspects of teaching kids, and students as high brow papers, and
the real world demands of programming. And the rest the core are not too
shabby either.

IMHO, there are currently only 2 top tier active hotspots where the cool
theoretical meets with the practical and usable in programming language
theory, the Haskell and PLT ecospheres.

Scala, and Closure would be next.

Don't listen to the wingnuts comedy central wannabe's cracking poor puns here
about schemes and rackets (well laugh at the good ones).

In all seriousness, if you are at that point where you've stumbled onto the
fact that there is a whole world beyond Java, Cobol, C and C++ and are having
fun exploring Smalltalk, SML, OCaml, Haskell, Scala, Closure et al, do not
skip, repeat, do not skip exploring PLT Racket. It is as rich, and deep and
mind altering as any of them.

------
zephjc
Is this some sort of early April Fools joke?

~~~
apgwoz
No. [http://list.cs.brown.edu/pipermail/plt-
dev/2010-February/002...](http://list.cs.brown.edu/pipermail/plt-
dev/2010-February/002233.html)

~~~
JoelMcCracken
Gah. now I feel bad. I didn't know about this.

------
pellicle
Sounds like a great idea. My understanding is that PLT Scheme goes way beyond
R5 (even R6), and with the new "R7" dual standard on the way, better to change
the name now rather than later and be potentially confused with the upcoming
R7 "big" Scheme.

------
icey
It looks to me as though they're opening the doors to extend Scheme beyond
RxRS specifications. Or am I misreading their press release?

~~~
zosi
You are. They already have a dialect of Scheme that contains many extensions
beyond the RxRS specs, this is just giving it a name so that people stop
confusing "PLT's dialect of Scheme" with "Scheme in general".

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the name "Racket", because it makes me think
of tennis rather than racketeering. However, I do support the idea of having a
PLT "brand" rather than a hodgepodge of names like DrScheme, MrEd and
mzscheme.

~~~
apgwoz
racket n. an illegal or dishonest scheme

Makes perfect sense.

~~~
jcl
Makes sense, but I'm not sure I like the way it's headed. Scheme is so named
due to a Lisp system called Planner. "Scheme" and "Planner" (and, I suppose,
"Gambit") have mostly neutral connotations. "Swindle", "Larceny", "Heist", and
now "Racket" are obviously criminal.

It's not a good direction, PR-wise. You end up with people having to justify
to their bosses why they want to use something called Racket for work, or
justifying to parents why their kids are learning Racket in schools.

(And then there's the inevitable analogy: Python : Pythonista :: Racket :
Racketeer)

~~~
jrockway
_You end up with people having to justify to their bosses why they want to use
something called Racket for work, or justifying to parents why their kids are
learning Racket in schools._

I doubt it.

------
zitterbewegung
Why can't they be like clojure and pick a name that isn't overloaded by
everything else...

~~~
zephjc
'PLT Scheme' to just 'Skeem'?

~~~
msg
Say this paragraph out loud:

I don't use Gambit, I use Skeem. Yes, I know Gambit is Scheme. Skeem is also
Scheme, just a different Scheme.

------
signa11
ponzi, would be just too cute perhaps ?

~~~
masterponomo
That's a winner:-)

Made me think of Risky, but Ponzi is better.

------
swannodette
I've been using Clojure a lot and have been lamenting the fact that Clojure,
while great for building applications isn't great for shell scripting. Racket
may be just the tool I reach for when I can't write it in Clojure.

2010 looks like it's going to be a _great_ year for Lisp.

------
evanrmurphy
_Old executables, web sites, mailing addresses, and module names will forward
to the new ones. We will work to make the transition as painless as possible
and to preserve old references for as long as possible._

So folks using Arc can probably expect

    
    
      mzscheme -f as.scm
    

to still be supported for some time.

~~~
blasdel
Doesn't Arc require you to use a version of mzscheme from 2007?

~~~
evanrmurphy
not since arc 3.1

<http://arclanguage.org/item?id=10254>

~~~
WalterGR
Wow. <http://arclanguage.org/install> should _really_ be updated then.

------
flatline
Kind of like naming something with the word "hacker", it could be something
good or something bad. The "News" bit of "Hacker News" adds context that makes
it seem legit, even if you initially take "Hacker" as something negative.
There is no implicit context for "PLT Racket". Just my $.02, but it's not a
good choice of names.

------
mark_l_watson
Strange name change, but a good programming environment (although I more
frequently use Emacs+Gambit-C Scheme because I like being able to effortlessly
build small compiled applications - harder to do in PLT Scheme).

I look forward to the Racket release this summer.

------
wingo
This makes me sad. PLT folk are great Scheme researchers and practitioners;
now I fear their work and conversations will turn ever-more inward.

OTOH I can't blame them for wanting to leave the current Scheme governance
story behind.

------
blahedo
The entire text of <http://www.plt-racket.org/>:

    
    
      Expected release date: Summer 2010
    

Ummm...?

~~~
jcl
There used to be several paragraphs, e.g. explaining the choice of name, but
it's been taken down. I guess this wasn't the launch they were hoping for.

------
lispm
why not rename 'PLT' too?

'Higher-Order Internet Technology', 'HIT Racket'.

Not sure if names like Scheme, Racket and Swindle attract the right people...

~~~
rsheridan6
And what kind of people does Stalin (a Scheme compiler) attract? I shudder to
think.

------
whyenot
Why not Ratchet instead of Racket. Then you could rename DrScheme to
NurseRatchet... :)

------
joeld42
Nice move. Names matter. I like it.

