13 ms·

Racket v6.8

201 points by nickmain 10y ago

mslev 10y ago
I used Racket in my Programming Languages class at Cal Poly. Took a while (a long while) to get my head around it, but it ended up being pretty fun. Haven't been able to convince myself to use it after that though ;) Shoutout to Prof Clements and his excellent sideburns.
- crowhack 10y ago
  small world. im happy Clements is still teaching! his programming languages course with Racket was my one of my favorites.
eatonphil 10y ago
I've been getting into Racket recently after spending some time with Chicken. I like Chicken a lot. It has a great ecosystem. However, it can't compete with the Racket standard libraries (and/or libraries that get included by default) -- which are better than most languages its age and popularity (OCaml, Haskell, other Schemes, etc.). For instance, the standard library includes a completely asynchronous web server and asynchronous database drivers. In general, one of the benefits of Scheme versus (say) Python is the regularity and simplicity of the syntax. It also has a better concurrency story. Racket also makes it incredibly easy to parse new languages and run them in a JITed intepreter (Racket). Though I haven't played around with this yet. See [0] for a really great example. There are some not great parts though. You'll need to spend time deciphering the use of custom languages (#lang). I wrote a little about this for #lang webserver [1]. But my biggest issue with Racket right now is its completely useless stack traces. I found an "errortrace" module [2], but it has not helped in practice. Additionally, the Racket standard library lacks a comprehensive time library and a good string templating library (for HTML generation). I am working on an internal web app in Racket, but am limping through the built-in web-server/template module [3]. There is a mustache implementation but I'm not a big fan [4]. I plan to write a more jinja-like library when it's not a distraction from finishing the app. Footnote: Scheme is very similar to Standard ML in that it is a simple base that many people experiment with to test out patterns in language design (styles of concurrency, garbage collection, compilation techniques, etc.) Racket is no different. Pycket was posted recently and I found it very interesting [5]. It is written in RPython. In particular, the white paper introducing it has a fascinating background on JITing and compilation techniques in Scheme [6]. [0] http://beautifulracket.com/stacker/ http://beautifulracket.com/stacker/ [1] http://notes.eatonphil.com/2016/29/walking-through-basic-racket-web-service.html http://notes.eatonphil.com/2016/29/walking-through-basic-rac... [2] http://docs.racket-lang.org/errortrace/ http://docs.racket-lang.org/errortrace/ [3] http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/templates.html?q=web-server%2Ftemplates http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/templates.html?q=web-... [4] https://github.com/adolfopa/racket-mustache https://github.com/adolfopa/racket-mustache [5] https://github.com/pycket/pycket https://github.com/pycket/pycket [6] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/samth/pycket-draft.pdf http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/samth/pycket-draft.pdf
- notjack 10y ago
  Hi, Racket community member here. Thanks for the in-depth comment about your experience, and thanks for writing about your work with the webserver library! A couple follow up questions if you've got the time: 1. Could you elaborate on the stacktrace issues you encountered? 2. The Gregor package [0] is currently a bit of a community standard for date and time functionality. There's a general desire to merge this into the Racket stdlib. Would this package suit your needs? 3. For string templates, a lot of folks use Scribble "at expressions" via the `at-exp` meta-language combined with format specifiers from `racket/format` to write code that looks very similar to python string interpolation and other language-integrated string formatting systems. You can see an example of that on Greg Hendershott's blog [1]. Would this work for your use cases or were you looking for something a bit more involved? [0] http://docs.racket-lang.org/gregor/ http://docs.racket-lang.org/gregor/ [1] http://www.greghendershott.com/2015/08/at-expressions.html http://www.greghendershott.com/2015/08/at-expressions.html
  - disconcision 10y ago
    Hey, I'm a racket beginner and I'm wondering where the best places are to ask questions. I'm asking in general, but also specifically I'm trying to do more complex terminal input/output, and I'm having trouble getting the charterm package running.
    - eatonphil 10y ago
      I've always gotten great feedback quickly on the #racket channel on freenode.
    - jbclements 10y ago
      There are some very helpful folks on Stack Overflow, but the racket-users mailing list is definitely the authoritative resource. Also, Neil Van Dyke (the package's author) is helpful and responsive.
  - eatonphil 10y ago
    Hello! I cannot say for sure that I am not imposing the issues on myself but writing in a bad manner. In particular, syntax errors are reported well. The issue is that runtime errors only seem to report the function in which an error occurred and not even a line number. This makes debugging slow and tedious. The web-server template library has similarly poor stack traces in both runtime and syntax errors. And while I better understand the complexity here, I still feel uncomfortable asking a coworker to contribute with the state of template debug messages. Certainly, compared to the Python standard time library, Racket does well. And between SRFI-19 and Gregor, 3rd-party time libraries are not bad. The biggest thing the standard time library and SRFI-19 misses are some default formatting and parsing constants for the most common formats (like ISO8601). This way users don't need to look up the ISO8601 format every time and and the SRFI-19 format keywords. Furthermore, documentation for and examples of SRFI-19 and the standard time library are lacking. This makes it difficult to get started. The at-exp language may have its use-cases. But I really don't enjoy hacking together HTML templates with it right now. Furthermore, HTML templates are especially a cross-team piece of a project. I think the only suitable tool for it is a simple DSL that (e.g.) doesn't require interpolating Racket to loop over data.
ramigb 10y ago
"MacBook Pro laptops with touch bars are supported" Could someone with knowledge kindly explain to me why this is mentioned? Isn't the support -for modern OS's- supposed to be for the OS layer and not the hardware directly?
- tathougies 10y ago
  Racket includes an IDE as part of the language. I imagine this has to do with that.
- samth 10y ago
  The Mac core GUI and graphics libraries are slightly different on laptops with the touch bar, in ways that broke Racket's GUI libraries. You can see the commit that fixed it here: https://github.com/racket/gui/commit/b9e94f9c45e070beca79b286c6c47a325b38dbdb https://github.com/racket/gui/commit/b9e94f9c45e070beca79b28...
ziotom78 10y ago
Several years ago I documented in a blog post a few experiments I did with Racket [1]. The experience was extremely pleasant, Racket is well designed and the documentation is superb. [1] http://ziotom78.blogspot.it/2011/02/experiments-with-racket-in-last-weeks-i.html http://ziotom78.blogspot.it/2011/02/experiments-with-racket-...
jonathanstrange 10y ago
Awesome! I'm currently using Racket for a large end-user application. Apart from a few system integration issues the only downside so far is its long application startup time. I'll have to live with that. Edit: One feature they should really consider adding is an online documentation for functions that is displayed in a status line while you type. I've found this incredibly helpful in other IDEs.
- samth 10y ago
  In DrRacket, you can see automatic documentation for the function your cursor is on in the upper-right corner of the window (you can mouse over it to show it, or hit F2). Is that what you're looking for?
amelius 10y ago
> Racket runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Develop on one; deploy to all three. It's a pity that iOS and Android are still missing.
- baldfat 10y ago
  I don't see that being to far off. I could see Racket doing the same thing Haxe is doing in that space with regards to deployment system to Mobile.
throwaway7645 10y ago
Is there any chance for another Racket book besides Realm of Racket and How to Design Programs? I like the concept of RoR, but I'm not super interested in web programming and it seems to have a lot of that. HtDP is supposed to be like SICP, which is great, but doesn't help me a lot with learning the language (at least not as much).
- kd0amg 10y ago
  RoR doesn't look particularly web-focused to me (the end of it mentions the web server as something worth reading about). That said, it leaves a lot of Racket's features untouched. HtDP doesn't really aim for SICP's niche -- it is meant to be an introduction to programming and the mode of thought involved, rather than trying to cover the structure and implementation of languages.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    I really liked RoR for how it presented items and just walked through items. I am self taught and know a dozen languages well enough to write a lightweight program, but RoR made me understand all of them better. I use R weekly and learning a scheme language like Racket opened up a whole part of R I missed. R is actually based off of S as well as Scheme. So I now program totally differently because of RoR.
    - peatmoss 10y ago
      High-five for learning R better via exposure to Racket. People ask me how to level up their R programming, and I tell them, "Read HtDP." I haven't read RoR--placing an order now.
      - throwaway7645 10y ago
        How is Racket anything like R?
        baldfat 10y ago

201 points by nickmain 10y ago

mslev 10y ago

I used Racket in my Programming Languages class at Cal Poly. Took a while (a long while) to get my head around it, but it ended up being pretty fun. Haven't been able to convince myself to use it after that though ;) Shoutout to Prof Clements and his excellent sideburns.

crowhack 10y ago
small world. im happy Clements is still teaching! his programming languages course with Racket was my one of my favorites.

eatonphil 10y ago

I've been getting into Racket recently after spending some time with Chicken. I like Chicken a lot. It has a great ecosystem. However, it can't compete with the Racket standard libraries (and/or libraries that get included by default) -- which are better than most languages its age and popularity (OCaml, Haskell, other Schemes, etc.). For instance, the standard library includes a completely asynchronous web server and asynchronous database drivers. In general, one of the benefits of Scheme versus (say) Python is the regularity and simplicity of the syntax. It also has a better concurrency story. Racket also makes it incredibly easy to parse new languages and run them in a JITed intepreter (Racket). Though I haven't played around with this yet. See [0] for a really great example. There are some not great parts though. You'll need to spend time deciphering the use of custom languages (#lang). I wrote a little about this for #lang webserver [1]. But my biggest issue with Racket right now is its completely useless stack traces. I found an "errortrace" module [2], but it has not helped in practice. Additionally, the Racket standard library lacks a comprehensive time library and a good string templating library (for HTML generation). I am working on an internal web app in Racket, but am limping through the built-in web-server/template module [3]. There is a mustache implementation but I'm not a big fan [4]. I plan to write a more jinja-like library when it's not a distraction from finishing the app. Footnote: Scheme is very similar to Standard ML in that it is a simple base that many people experiment with to test out patterns in language design (styles of concurrency, garbage collection, compilation techniques, etc.) Racket is no different. Pycket was posted recently and I found it very interesting [5]. It is written in RPython. In particular, the white paper introducing it has a fascinating background on JITing and compilation techniques in Scheme [6]. [0] http://beautifulracket.com/stacker/ http://beautifulracket.com/stacker/ [1] http://notes.eatonphil.com/2016/29/walking-through-basic-racket-web-service.html http://notes.eatonphil.com/2016/29/walking-through-basic-rac... [2] http://docs.racket-lang.org/errortrace/ http://docs.racket-lang.org/errortrace/ [3] http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/templates.html?q=web-server%2Ftemplates http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/templates.html?q=web-... [4] https://github.com/adolfopa/racket-mustache https://github.com/adolfopa/racket-mustache [5] https://github.com/pycket/pycket https://github.com/pycket/pycket [6] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/samth/pycket-draft.pdf http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/samth/pycket-draft.pdf

notjack 10y ago
Hi, Racket community member here. Thanks for the in-depth comment about your experience, and thanks for writing about your work with the webserver library! A couple follow up questions if you've got the time: 1. Could you elaborate on the stacktrace issues you encountered? 2. The Gregor package [0] is currently a bit of a community standard for date and time functionality. There's a general desire to merge this into the Racket stdlib. Would this package suit your needs? 3. For string templates, a lot of folks use Scribble "at expressions" via the `at-exp` meta-language combined with format specifiers from `racket/format` to write code that looks very similar to python string interpolation and other language-integrated string formatting systems. You can see an example of that on Greg Hendershott's blog [1]. Would this work for your use cases or were you looking for something a bit more involved? [0] http://docs.racket-lang.org/gregor/ http://docs.racket-lang.org/gregor/ [1] http://www.greghendershott.com/2015/08/at-expressions.html http://www.greghendershott.com/2015/08/at-expressions.html
- disconcision 10y ago
  Hey, I'm a racket beginner and I'm wondering where the best places are to ask questions. I'm asking in general, but also specifically I'm trying to do more complex terminal input/output, and I'm having trouble getting the charterm package running.
  - eatonphil 10y ago
    I've always gotten great feedback quickly on the #racket channel on freenode.
  - jbclements 10y ago
    There are some very helpful folks on Stack Overflow, but the racket-users mailing list is definitely the authoritative resource. Also, Neil Van Dyke (the package's author) is helpful and responsive.
- eatonphil 10y ago
  Hello! I cannot say for sure that I am not imposing the issues on myself but writing in a bad manner. In particular, syntax errors are reported well. The issue is that runtime errors only seem to report the function in which an error occurred and not even a line number. This makes debugging slow and tedious. The web-server template library has similarly poor stack traces in both runtime and syntax errors. And while I better understand the complexity here, I still feel uncomfortable asking a coworker to contribute with the state of template debug messages. Certainly, compared to the Python standard time library, Racket does well. And between SRFI-19 and Gregor, 3rd-party time libraries are not bad. The biggest thing the standard time library and SRFI-19 misses are some default formatting and parsing constants for the most common formats (like ISO8601). This way users don't need to look up the ISO8601 format every time and and the SRFI-19 format keywords. Furthermore, documentation for and examples of SRFI-19 and the standard time library are lacking. This makes it difficult to get started. The at-exp language may have its use-cases. But I really don't enjoy hacking together HTML templates with it right now. Furthermore, HTML templates are especially a cross-team piece of a project. I think the only suitable tool for it is a simple DSL that (e.g.) doesn't require interpolating Racket to loop over data.

ramigb 10y ago

"MacBook Pro laptops with touch bars are supported" Could someone with knowledge kindly explain to me why this is mentioned? Isn't the support -for modern OS's- supposed to be for the OS layer and not the hardware directly?

tathougies 10y ago
Racket includes an IDE as part of the language. I imagine this has to do with that.
samth 10y ago
The Mac core GUI and graphics libraries are slightly different on laptops with the touch bar, in ways that broke Racket's GUI libraries. You can see the commit that fixed it here: https://github.com/racket/gui/commit/b9e94f9c45e070beca79b286c6c47a325b38dbdb https://github.com/racket/gui/commit/b9e94f9c45e070beca79b28...

ziotom78 10y ago

Several years ago I documented in a blog post a few experiments I did with Racket [1]. The experience was extremely pleasant, Racket is well designed and the documentation is superb. [1] http://ziotom78.blogspot.it/2011/02/experiments-with-racket-in-last-weeks-i.html http://ziotom78.blogspot.it/2011/02/experiments-with-racket-...

jonathanstrange 10y ago

Awesome! I'm currently using Racket for a large end-user application. Apart from a few system integration issues the only downside so far is its long application startup time. I'll have to live with that. Edit: One feature they should really consider adding is an online documentation for functions that is displayed in a status line while you type. I've found this incredibly helpful in other IDEs.

samth 10y ago
In DrRacket, you can see automatic documentation for the function your cursor is on in the upper-right corner of the window (you can mouse over it to show it, or hit F2). Is that what you're looking for?

amelius 10y ago

> Racket runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Develop on one; deploy to all three. It's a pity that iOS and Android are still missing.

baldfat 10y ago
I don't see that being to far off. I could see Racket doing the same thing Haxe is doing in that space with regards to deployment system to Mobile.

throwaway7645 10y ago

Is there any chance for another Racket book besides Realm of Racket and How to Design Programs? I like the concept of RoR, but I'm not super interested in web programming and it seems to have a lot of that. HtDP is supposed to be like SICP, which is great, but doesn't help me a lot with learning the language (at least not as much).

kd0amg 10y ago
RoR doesn't look particularly web-focused to me (the end of it mentions the web server as something worth reading about). That said, it leaves a lot of Racket's features untouched. HtDP doesn't really aim for SICP's niche -- it is meant to be an introduction to programming and the mode of thought involved, rather than trying to cover the structure and implementation of languages.
- baldfat 10y ago
  I really liked RoR for how it presented items and just walked through items. I am self taught and know a dozen languages well enough to write a lightweight program, but RoR made me understand all of them better. I use R weekly and learning a scheme language like Racket opened up a whole part of R I missed. R is actually based off of S as well as Scheme. So I now program totally differently because of RoR.
  - peatmoss 10y ago
    High-five for learning R better via exposure to Racket. People ask me how to level up their R programming, and I tell them, "Read HtDP." I haven't read RoR--placing an order now.
    - throwaway7645 10y ago
      How is Racket anything like R?
      - baldfat 10y ago