
Racket Language – New website design - Learn2win
http://racket-lang.org/
======
cocktailpeanuts
I don't want to be that guy, but I think the design needs work. Especially
since the title is saying "has a new design". I wonder what it used to look
like. It looks like a nice piece of technology, but like the other guy said,
the website is too busy and I don't know where to look at. It took me a minute
to find the github link. It's almost like it's hidden purposely.

Also the "Books" section is kind of misleading and made me think they're
taking credit for something that they didn't do. After taking a look at the
page for a while finally realized it's like scheme/lisp, and the books section
kind of makes sense, but still it's still very confusing.

This may be too harsh but the design almost reminds me of those parking
websites that make money off of adsense. Hope they put some more effort into
the design so the website can actually do the language more justice.

~~~
edem
You __are__ that guy. The design is cool and this is the best looking lisp
site IMHO.

~~~
nilved
Not that this design is bad, I think Guile's site is fantastic.
[https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/)

~~~
oblio
Wow! It truly is. I wanted to make a snarky comment about ivory tower Lisps
but the Guile site is awesome: down to Earth, practical _and_ relatable.

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lomnakkus
IMO, the "only show text + links on hover" thing needs to go. If you
absolutely _must_ do something like this, please use faded-but-visible text
instead of completely hiding it.

(It's also really annoying on mobile where you have to actively tap to show
the links.)

EDIT: Reasoning: Does this page contain the information I need? I can't tell
without apparently hovering over everything. (Plus, if I hover away from one
of the 'graphs' it's easy to forget what was on there.)

~~~
detaro
Right, I nearly missed the fact that there were links - if my mouse pointer
hadn't passed over one of the fields while going to the "close tab" button.

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Blackthorn
Feel like I'm the only one here who likes the site. I really like it. Just
hope it works on mobile too where you can't hover.

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joesb
"Solve problems. Make languages."

That basically sums up my problem learning Racket. "What is Racket the
language? What language am I supposed to learn? What language am I supposed to
use in production code? Will one language be compatible with another?

I got lost reading Racket document. One section talk about a class syntax of a
language. Another talk about some other stuff that never utilize a class. What
am I supposed to do with this?

I don't want to learn languages, I want to solve my problem.

~~~
brudgers
I had exactly the same experience a few years ago. Now a few years later, more
of the Racket documentation makes sense, but many parts are still outside of
my background understanding. I still have to trade-off the frustration of not
understanding for convenient access to all the documentation. Because Racket's
documentation is so good, it's easy to navigate to a subject that's over my
head.

I agree there is a problem with 'Racket'.

'Racket' can mean an ecosystem distributed with batteries included. It can
mean the language referred to by #lang racket at the top of a source file. And
'Racket' can mean any one of several other languages shipped in the
distribution.

Racket the language (aka #lang racket) is a useful general purpose programming
language. When #lang racket programs address complex problems they tend to
become more complex. When #lang racket programs implement sophisticated
procedures, they tend to become more sophisticated. Python, Ruby, C, etc. are
similar in that respect. The Racket documentation reflects this. There are
parts that are simple and self contained. There are parts that are at the edge
of programming language design. And they're all in one place.

~~~
dmux
I've had the same issues navigating their documentation. About 10 months ago I
attempted to write a reddit scraper using Racket. I started out reading their
"net/http-client" library and had to turn to the /r/racket subreddit to find
out that the "net/url" library was what I wanted. I'd love to see some simple
directory that relates development intention with a library: "Web Scraping,
JSON parsing => net/url".

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jstewartmobile
The docs are the only part I go to, and they look the same (not a bad thing,
because they were always beautiful).

Felleisen and and his group have been working on Racket for a long time, and
it shows. I think PG's Arc even runs on top of it.

Only gripe I can register is that they have gone full-speed-ahead on the
DSL/metaprogramming aspect which kind of works against the language. See
Tarver's "The Bipolar Lisp Programmer," or Alan Kay's quote: " _Lisp isn 't a
language, it's a building material._"

~~~
dualogy
> I think PG's Arc even runs on top of it.

That so? Then what's the actual use-case for Arc again? It's a Lisp, Racket is
a Lisp, hence a Lisp running on another Lisp? "Lisps all the way up"? ---well
that's not unconsistent with the target audience I'm sure ;)

~~~
brudgers
The case for and against Arc is the same as for any other programming
language: Does the syntactic sugar over the Turing Tarpit make the task at
hand easier or harder. None of which is to suggest that I typically see anyone
making a strong case for Arc these days.

I mean if anyone really was actually making any kind of case for Arc, they'd
probably start with organizing it and promoting it in ways that would
facilitate its inclusion as just another language in the batteries included
distributions of Racket.

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no_protocol
That's great, but it doesn't really seem to tell me anything at all about what
it is.

From what I saw, it looks like a site that helps you make a variety of line
drawings. Next time I need to make some line graphs, I'll check it out.

~~~
Dinius
Worth a read, or at the very least a look:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_\(programming_language\))

~~~
no_protocol
Thanks.

To the creator of this site:

Take into consideration the commonality between all of these:

[https://www.python.org/](https://www.python.org/)

[https://golang.org/](https://golang.org/)

[https://www.rust-lang.org/](https://www.rust-lang.org/)

[https://dlang.org/](https://dlang.org/)

[http://elm-lang.org/](http://elm-lang.org/)

[http://plt-scheme.org/](http://plt-scheme.org/)

Each of these language homepages clearly explains that they are introducing a
programming language. This new racket-lang.org page doesn't. It has a huge
impact on what users will think when they load the page.

The PLT Scheme homepage is leagues better than the new Racket one because it
tells me exactly what it is for. Don't let yourselves go backwards.

~~~
egeozcan
[https://www.rust-lang.org/](https://www.rust-lang.org/) is the best example.
There is a code example, clear links to documentation and source, a concise
description, easy to see links to most common places. Very, very good.

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aban
The re-design was done by Matthew Butterick [0].

IMHO it looks nice and modern, and quite readable thanks to the great
typography, but there are some fair issues raised here. So I opened an issue
to let them know about it [1].

[0]: [https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-
org/pull/28](https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-org/pull/28)

[1]: [https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-
org/issues/31](https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-org/issues/31)

~~~
nilved
Matthew Butterick is an obvious choice for the Racket website. He did a great
job.

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agumonkey
I personally love it, it's light, just enough graphics, linear enough but not
too long. Action button nicely placed.

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edem
Wow. This is the best looking lisp site so far. It is even responsive! Keep up
the good work!

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um304
Good design, but I think there should be bit more info about the project
upfront at the top. It took me significant time to figure what Racket is.

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Nekorosu
The design is ok. The interactions need some tweaks. The cursor should change
to finger pointer on mouseover on code snippet. Probably it's better to
highlight code snippet on mouseover before expanding it on click.

The other issue is all the links lead to pages with really old design. Hope
this will get fixed too eventually.

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adelarsq
I feel really uncomfortable with this site. I got lost and just after some
time I realized where each thing is placed.

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auggierose
the redesign seems to have impacted the PLT Redex site at:

[https://redex.racket-lang.org/](https://redex.racket-lang.org/)

I am trying to read the model part of the set of scopes paper and running it
in PLT Redex, but it seems to be unavailable currently.

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largehotcoffee
I have no idea what's going on on this website.

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gigatexal
The website is fine I guess. What's more distracting is the lisp-like
language. The parentheses are just too much. I guess I'm not one naturally
inclined to functional languages.

~~~
madawan
It's racket, you can change the syntax at runtime if you so desire. (But if
you learn to use the IDE the parens don't matter.)

~~~
qntty
is DrRacket the IDE? If so, is there more to it than the REPL with the simple
text editor above it?

~~~
moron4hire
A lot more.

