
Racket v5.1.2 - shawndumas
http://blog.racket-lang.org/2011/08/racket-v512.html
======
cturner
Racket makes it easy to fire up a Scheme and start doing work. It's the
flexible, usable lisp with libraries that I was waiting for. There's less
cause to drop SICP from the curriculum when you can get a high-quality scheme
distribution and tooling on several platforms :)

They should improve out-of-box usability. You shouldn't need to pick a
language when you first install it - that's a barrier to new users. Have a
default (the shapes one described in the getting started area would be fine),
and make it easy to change.

~~~
djm
The teaching languages are only a menu option away. Most of them are designed
to be used by students working through 'how to design programs' (htdp.org). I
wouldn't really consider that a barrier to entry. Keep in mind most of the
teachpacks implement _reduced_ scheme implementations designed for students at
a particular level so they would not be much use to anyone else as the default
startup option.

~~~
cturner
Sensible defaults. Sure, it's a polish issue. Polish is a good thing,
particularly for racket which aspires to and is succeeding at making scheme
accessible.

When you fire up rebol, perl, ruby, python, awk for the first time, they don't
send you off to poke around in preference screens. Type and go.

~~~
djm
My assumption was that most of the people who load up DrRacket _don't_ go
poking around for the teaching languages. It's a pretty useful IDE, not just
for students. I usually use it unless I'm working with a large number of files
in which case I prefer emacs.

