
Racket 7.8 - samth
https://blog.racket-lang.org/2020/08/racket-v7-8.html
======
simias
For those who like me aren't familiar with the concept of "float boxing", I
think this is the same thing: [https://www.lexifi.com/ocaml/unboxed-floats-
ocaml/](https://www.lexifi.com/ocaml/unboxed-floats-ocaml/)

Basically if I understand correctly this removes an indirection when using
floats, probably reducing the memory footprint and improving performance.

~~~
bjoli
For computations using a lot of float arithmetic it removes boxing and
unboxing. Say: (fl+ (fl* f1 f2) (fl* fl3 fl4)). This has to unbox fl1 fl2 fl3
and fl4, but racket 7.7 immediately boxes the result of fl* only to unbox it
again for fl+. This new racket does not.

------
rcarmo
I like the HTTP speed ups. I wonder how fast the new engine is in general.

I have played with Chez, haven’t had time to try doing a serious amount of
Racket but worry about algorithmic performance-graph traversals, for instance.

~~~
cat199
I'm not very up on about the chez integration into racket, but on it's own,
chez is/was consistently at the top of scheme performance benchmarks in almost
all areas - it's nearly 40y old with continuous improvements/research into
performance throughout the history and was sold commercially for many years
and well past the era where buying tools for software development is the
default.

This paper from 15 years ago should impress anyone interested in compiler
design performance, esp. for weakly typed languages or lisps:

[https://legacy.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/pubs/hocs.pdf](https://legacy.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/pubs/hocs.pdf)

------
fovc
Is HN still running on Racket via arc? Have you guys tried out the chez
backend?

~~~
yissp
I think you mean the chez backend? Chicken is a different scheme
implementation.

~~~
fovc
Yes, thanks! Just edited

------
nikki93
Anyone try running this on iOS? Does the CS backend always definitely need
writable executable memory access (not available on iOS) or can it interpret a
bytecode?

~~~
soegaard
[https://defn.io/2020/01/05/racket-on-ios/](https://defn.io/2020/01/05/racket-
on-ios/)

~~~
nikki93
Ah yes I remember seeing this then forgot. Thanks! :D

~~~
soegaard
Use [https://racket-stories.com](https://racket-stories.com) to find old
Racket stories.

------
vmchale
Cool! I have a gemini PDA that runs AArch64, always good to be able to do more
functional programming on it :)

------
pjmlp
> Racket CS may become the default Racket implementation in the next release

Looking great!

------
ed25519FUUU
I’m curious why we have aarch64 and not ARM64?

~~~
ben-schaaf
After a little research it looks like aarch64 (Arm ARCHitecture 64-bit) is the
official name. ARM64 comes from the previously closed source llvm backend for
aarch64 made by Apple:
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY5ODk](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY5ODk),
but is now used as shorthand, like x64.

~~~
cellularmitosis
> like x64

I seem to recall reading somewhere that "x64" actually referred to something
which was distinct from x86_64 (was it a special mode of using 32-bit pointers
with a 64-bit kernel? I can't remember exactly now), but now that I am
googling for it, I can't seem to find anything.

~~~
vlovich123
You're thinking of x32 ABI [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI)

------
sansnomme
And still no proper dependency versioning, it seems that the progress made by
Npm, RubyGems, Cargo is entirely lost on them.

~~~
Fellshard
There are a vast number of critiques regarding the model those ecosystems have
used; it would be unwise to stick the label 'progress' on them until some of
those core problems are resolved.

~~~
simias
With regards to dependency versioning? I wasn't aware of that. I've been very
happy with Cargo's handling of versioning so far, but maybe I've been lucky
and haven't hit the pain spots.

