6 ms·

Release Announcement for Racket 6.10

100 points by nickmain 9y ago

notliketherest 9y ago
Students everywhere thank you
- lurker78 9y ago
  praise the racket overlords, I'm very grateful for this release also
gus_massa 9y ago
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 9y ago
  Thanks! We've updated the link from https://download.racket-lang.org https://download.racket-lang.org.
peatmoss 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  > 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.
  - peatmoss 9y ago
    Good point. I've wondered if the "write more of Racket in Racket" effort required by the move to Chez Scheme will result in an easier path to Racketscript. IIRC, Clojurescript was helped along by something similar.
  - metaobject 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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.
    - notjack 9y ago
      The "Racket VM" is designed from the ground up for other languages to be built on top of it (hence the #lang line at the beginning of every file) so it would likely be much better. Hackett[1] is a Haskell-like lang built on top of racket, for a nontrivial example. [1] https://github.com/lexi-lambda/hackett https://github.com/lexi-lambda/hackett
147 9y ago
Anybody use Racket in production? Every time I think about it, the lack of libraries holds me back.
- cultofmetatron 9y ago
  ahem ^
- metaobject 9y ago
  We used Bigloo for a while (with a considerable amount of in-house developed code/libraries). That project has since ended, but it was fun while it lasted.
- Hasknewbie 9y ago
  Curious too, but mostly about Racket's performances in recent releases, I've always been told it's rather slow.
  - peatmoss 9y ago
    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?lang=racket&lang2=java http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan... Slow compared to, say, Python3? Generally Racket wins out commandingly: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=racket&lang2=python3 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan... EDIT: Normal disclaimers about lies, damned lies, and benchmarks apply :-)
    - gus_massa 9y ago
      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.
kristianp 9y ago
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 9y ago
  complete guess, their doc generation system used this by default, now racket visual identity is tied to it

100 points by nickmain 9y ago

notliketherest 9y ago

Students everywhere thank you

lurker78 9y ago
praise the racket overlords, I'm very grateful for this release also

gus_massa 9y ago

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 9y ago
Thanks! We've updated the link from https://download.racket-lang.org https://download.racket-lang.org.

peatmoss 9y ago

> 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 9y ago
> 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.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  Good point. I've wondered if the "write more of Racket in Racket" effort required by the move to Chez Scheme will result in an easier path to Racketscript. IIRC, Clojurescript was helped along by something similar.
- metaobject 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
  - notjack 9y ago
    The "Racket VM" is designed from the ground up for other languages to be built on top of it (hence the #lang line at the beginning of every file) so it would likely be much better. Hackett[1] is a Haskell-like lang built on top of racket, for a nontrivial example. [1] https://github.com/lexi-lambda/hackett https://github.com/lexi-lambda/hackett

147 9y ago

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

cultofmetatron 9y ago
ahem ^
metaobject 9y ago
We used Bigloo for a while (with a considerable amount of in-house developed code/libraries). That project has since ended, but it was fun while it lasted.
Hasknewbie 9y ago
Curious too, but mostly about Racket's performances in recent releases, I've always been told it's rather slow.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  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?lang=racket&lang2=java http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan... Slow compared to, say, Python3? Generally Racket wins out commandingly: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=racket&lang2=python3 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan... EDIT: Normal disclaimers about lies, damned lies, and benchmarks apply :-)
  - gus_massa 9y ago
    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.

kristianp 9y ago

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 9y ago
complete guess, their doc generation system used this by default, now racket visual identity is tied to it