
Racket - bdj
http://racket-lang.org/
======
KirinDave
We really need to give kudos to these guys. They have been persistent for
_years_ in developing a high quality Scheme, and then taking it to the next
level. PLT Scheme is practical in its library design, flexible in its reader,
meticulous in its documentation and fast as an execution engine.

Making a language fast and well-documented is a thankless task. It's nothing
short of a herculean accomplishment for these guys to come out of left field
with such a fantastic offering.

~~~
carterschonwald
so so so true. Whats doubly impressive is that many of the core active members
are full time academics who are able to frame their research so that they can
both spend their time improving their PLT/Racket, and framing their work as
also being genuinely top notch research!

~~~
aufreak3
Totally agree with both. They've taken great initiative and the criticisms
that come with it. On top of all this, they create Moby which compiles to
Javascript. If this were a concert, I'd give them a standing ovation.

------
angrycoder
Now that is great rebranding.

All it needs now is 'try Racket in your browser' and a video of some dude
making a blog in 15 minutes using Racket. Then it will be the new hotness.

~~~
jmatt
Yeah that is great rebranding.

 _All it needs now is 'try Racket in your browser' and a video of some dude
making a blog in 15 minutes using Racket. Then it will be the new hotness._

You're using it now. Arc was built on top of PLT and news.arc ships with it.
So,you are using the killer app / example that you are looking for right now.

:)

EDIT: Clarification

------
_pius
I love seeing framework or language homepages with good copy and design like
this one. The best ones make you want to stop what you're doing in your
favorite language and go code something with the new hotness _right now_.

~~~
skybrian
Unfortunately, it doesn't explain to the newcomer why this language is worth
learning. I was expecting some kind of feature comparison or "Why another
language?" article.

(That's a first impression. Then I read the comments here, and discovered it's
based on PLT Scheme, which at least tell s me a little about what to expect.)

~~~
Jimmy
It's not just based on PLT Scheme, it _is_ PLT Scheme, rebranded.

~~~
sigzero
I just have to say I hat that new brand. Yuck!

------
hvs
It'll be interesting to see where they go with this; there seems to be a
conscious effort to downplay the words "Scheme" and "Lisp" on the landing
pages. I'm more of a Common Lisper myself (at least for my personal
development), but I've been impressed with the PLT Scheme environment and
languages. And anything that increases the use of the lisp family of languages
is, imo, a good thing.

Others will obviously disagree with that sentiment. :)

------
Confusion
For reference:

Yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1408292>

Some months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1221374>

------
bandris
"Racket's interactive mode encourages experimentation, and quick scripts
easily compose into larger systems. Small scripts and large systems both
benefit from native-code JIT compilation. When a system gets too big to keep
in your head, you can add static types."

Impressive.

------
jey
Weird that it doesn't mention that it's the language formerly known as PLT
Scheme.

~~~
Ixiaus
Not really a "language" but an _implementation_ of the Scheme programming
language.

~~~
jey
IIRC, the whole point of renaming it Racket is to show that PLT Scheme is
"more than just scheme".

~~~
Ixiaus
I realize that, but it would be false to call it a "language"; it's more
appropriate to call it an "environment".

------
gorm
As if we are not already busy learning clojure?

~~~
spooneybarger
You're learning clojure and don't know scheme?

~~~
leif
I actually did this.

Frigging worthless university programming courses didn't bother teaching
scheme.

Learning scheme's libraries on my own along with the lisp paradigm proved too
daunting before (or maybe I just never found the right toy project to stick
with, not really sure). Having java libraries there to back me up (I was doing
stuff with hadoop too, so that made sense) gave me the little leg up I needed
to get over the hump.

------
lelele
What I don't like about Racket (former PLT Scheme) is that it's a closed
environment. You can't use common Scheme libraries (for instance: SLIB),
debugging facilities are hidden into Racket's editor therefore you can't
access them from Emacs or other tools, etc.

~~~
soegaard
There are some tools available for command line debugging:
[http://docs.racket-
lang.org/errortrace/index.html?q=debuggin...](http://docs.racket-
lang.org/errortrace/index.html?q=debugging) <http://docs.racket-
lang.org/unstable/debug.html?q=debugging>

SLIB has worked in the past. If there are specific parts of SLIB you need, try
asking the mailing list for help.

------
ghb
Any comments on how instructive HTDP is with Racket for introducing a non-
programmer to coding?

~~~
rsheridan6
I did that years ago and found it to be very useful.

------
bad_user
Is there anything like Practical Common Lisp for PLT Scheme?

~~~
elibarzilay
Not a standalone book, but there's a guide for doing practical things:
<http://docs.racket-lang.org/more/>

------
jheriko
Its cool, but I wonder just how many high-level web oriented languages we
really need...

~~~
muuh-gnu
Homo sapiens is pretty cool too, but I wonder how many walking talking apes we
really need... Random mutation + diversity + natural selection isnt yielding
working, practical results only for biological organisms.

You sound like we should simply take the first best anything we run into and
than stick with it unconditionally for the sole purpose of not having to spend
time looking over the wall.

Do you at least remember the day back then when you lost your
adventuresomeness?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_Do you at least remember the day back then when you lost your
adventuresomeness?_

You could have easily made the point without being snarky and insulting.

------
cgbystrom
Languages aside, I don't think the world needs another VM. Can't people just
target an existing one? Please?

~~~
chc
Your comment seems to imply that there is already a rich ecosystem of VMs in
use, but there aren't really. Basically, there's the Java VM, which is bad for
functional languages, and there's Mono, which is not really ideal for Scheme
either, nor very popular except that it allows compatibility with .NET.

At any rate, I'm pretty sure PLT Scheme predates both Java and the CLI, so
you'd be better off slagging Microsoft for _their_ duplication.

~~~
Hexstream
And <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llvm>

~~~
chc
LLVM is not really a virtual machine, at least not in the same sense as the
ones we're talking about.

