
Release Announcement for Racket 6.10 - nickmain
https://download.racket-lang.org/v6.10.html
======
peatmoss
> Internally, Racket's intermediate compatibility layer over operating-system
> facilities has been moved into its own library, "rktio", so it can be used
> in future Racket implementations.

Presumably by "future racket implementations" they mean the Racket 7 move to
Chez Scheme:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656397)

Also, this seems like a neat thing for people needing to deploy racket code
x-platform:

> Racket supports cross-compilation of executables in more cases, including
> executables that depend on packages for foreign libraries.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Presumably by "future racket implementations" they mean the Racket 7 move to
> Chez Scheme:

Presumably, it's broader than that, and applies to _any_ new VMs enabled by
the Racket-in-Racket effort, not just the expected move to Chez as the primary
VM.

~~~
metaobject
Is anyone aware of any languages targeting the Racket VM? Any thoughts on
whether the Racket VM would be a more pleasant VM target than, say, the JVM or
the .Net CLR?

~~~
peatmoss
The VM itself without the "racket is a language for building languages" thing?
Not that I know of. That being said, Racket has a LOT of languages built on
it.

For example, this site (Hacker News) is built in Arc, which is built on an old
version of Racket.

EDIT: Also worth noting that Racket will move to an even more performant
runtime (Chez Scheme) at some point in the future.

------
147
Anybody use Racket in production? Every time I think about it, the lack of
libraries holds me back.

~~~
Hasknewbie
Curious too, but mostly about Racket's performances in recent releases, I've
always been told it's rather slow.

~~~
peatmoss
Slow is relative. Slow compared to Java? In some cases yes, and in others not
so bad:
[http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=racket&lang2=java)

Slow compared to, say, Python3? Generally Racket wins out commandingly:
[http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=racket&lang2=python3)

EDIT: Normal disclaimers about lies, damned lies, and benchmarks apply :-)

~~~
gus_massa
I agree. Moreover, like the examples in the benchmargame, usually for code
that only crunch numbers Racket is 10x-20x times faster than Python. For code
that use a lot of strings or hash-tables, Racket is usually slightly slower,
20%-50%. YMMV.

It's also important to compare the idiomatic version of the code in Racket
versus the idiomatic version of the code in Python. If you make a line by line
translation, you can get an awful performance.

Also, remember that by default the DrRacket IDE use the mode "debugging" and
"preserve stacktrace". They are very handy for debugging but they make the
code much slower. The recommendation is to run the benchmarks in the command
line. But if you disable "debugging" and "preserve stacktrace" the results are
quite good.

------
notliketherest
Students everywhere thank you

~~~
lurker78
praise the racket overlords, I'm very grateful for this release also

------
gus_massa
I think it's better to link to the announcement page:
[https://download.racket-lang.org/v6.10.html](https://download.racket-
lang.org/v6.10.html)

~~~
sctb
Thanks! We've updated the link from [https://download.racket-
lang.org](https://download.racket-lang.org).

------
kristianp
Sorry to go meta, but why do people have to mess with the font weight? 99% of
the time you should just leave it at 400. (The font is bold on the whole page)

~~~
agumonkey
complete guess, their doc generation system used this by default, now racket
visual identity is tied to it

