5 ms·

Reimplementation of Racket to run on top of Chez Scheme

99 points by igravious 9y ago

sctb 9y ago
Discussion from the announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656397
- igravious 9y ago
  The project has moved on (both in terms of where the repo is hosted and implementation-wise) so I thought I'd re-submit this. Thanks for pointing to the previous discussion :)
  - hittaruki 9y ago
    Is there any update blog or something? This is one of those projects I am very exited about, would love to follow the progress.
    - sigstoat 9y ago
      this https://groups.google.com/d/msg/racket-dev/rkXuHNAmQaA/hjgPZHErAwAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/racket-dev/rkXuHNAmQaA/hjgPZ... looks like the most recent update from matthew. i don't think he's the blogging sort, so following along on racket-dev is likely your best option.
Scarbutt 9y ago
Curious, Chez and not some other scheme?
- kryptiskt 9y ago
  It's very fast and compiles to machine code. The other schemes that can keep up compile via C.
  - peatmoss 9y ago
    Benchmarks confirm: https://ecraven.github.io/r7rs-benchmarks/benchmark.html https://ecraven.github.io/r7rs-benchmarks/benchmark.html
  - kryptiskt 9y ago
    He, I forgot to mention that I also use Chez as a backend for Idris. https://github.com/melted/idris-chez https://github.com/melted/idris-chez
    - igravious 9y ago
      Very cool, thanks for the heads up.
withjive 9y ago
Very interesting! Great timing for myself, as I just pulled the Chez github repo just last night— a whopping 900mb btw! Chez became a point of interest to me after learning about it's solid performance (can even do whole program optimisation and across library boundaries). I wonder how feasible it would be to build a Chez target for Clojure? Most recently it has been open sourced under a GNU license by cisco, and is even on Github. Looks like good times for Chez and Scheme!
- igravious 9y ago
  Great! The bulkiness must be because of the length of the commit history rather than a measure of how bloated it is. At least I hope!
didibus 9y ago
Is it logical to code in Racket vs just coding in Chez Scheme? How much does racket bring to the table on top?
- igravious 9y ago
  Racket is more an ecosystem of languages and includes DrRacket, the Racket programming environment. There's a ton of documentation: https://docs.racket-lang.org/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/ For instance Racket can take on the personality of R5RS, R6RS, or R7RS (among others) say. Edit: Maybe I misunderstood your question?
  - didibus 9y ago
    I don't know Racket, nor Chez Scheme, but I've been wanting to learn one or the other. Now that Racket will just transpile to chez scheme, what's the advantage? Is there any reason for me to learn Racket instead of chez scheme? Like there's good reason for using Elm, TypeScirpt, Clojurescript over JavaScript directly. Or F# over C#, or Clojure over Java, etc. Is there similar advantage for Racket over Chez Scheme directly? At first glance it feels to me like no. Like the overhead of Racket not being the first class language of the backend might be a worst con then the slight language features it might have over Chez Scheme (if any). Is that true? That's what I'd like to know. Thanks.
    - igravious 9y ago
      As far as I'm aware Chez Scheme will become the language engine for the Racket family of languages replacing the current language engine. I mean, Racket used to be PLT Scheme, we're not talking a huge leap language-wise here, it's that the Chez Scheme back-end implementation is of very high quality. Racket has a lot of front-end stuff going on that Chez Scheme doesn't. I'm totally open to correction here from those with more familiarity. I am far from an expert on these matters. If you dig into the repos and docs that have been linked and read around for a bit you'll have as much knowledge as me :)
    - soegaard 9y ago

99 points by igravious 9y ago

sctb 9y ago

Discussion from the announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656397

igravious 9y ago
The project has moved on (both in terms of where the repo is hosted and implementation-wise) so I thought I'd re-submit this. Thanks for pointing to the previous discussion :)
- hittaruki 9y ago
  Is there any update blog or something? This is one of those projects I am very exited about, would love to follow the progress.
  - sigstoat 9y ago
    this https://groups.google.com/d/msg/racket-dev/rkXuHNAmQaA/hjgPZHErAwAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/racket-dev/rkXuHNAmQaA/hjgPZ... looks like the most recent update from matthew. i don't think he's the blogging sort, so following along on racket-dev is likely your best option.

Scarbutt 9y ago

Curious, Chez and not some other scheme?

kryptiskt 9y ago
It's very fast and compiles to machine code. The other schemes that can keep up compile via C.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  Benchmarks confirm: https://ecraven.github.io/r7rs-benchmarks/benchmark.html https://ecraven.github.io/r7rs-benchmarks/benchmark.html
- kryptiskt 9y ago
  He, I forgot to mention that I also use Chez as a backend for Idris. https://github.com/melted/idris-chez https://github.com/melted/idris-chez
  - igravious 9y ago
    Very cool, thanks for the heads up.

withjive 9y ago

Very interesting! Great timing for myself, as I just pulled the Chez github repo just last night— a whopping 900mb btw! Chez became a point of interest to me after learning about it's solid performance (can even do whole program optimisation and across library boundaries). I wonder how feasible it would be to build a Chez target for Clojure? Most recently it has been open sourced under a GNU license by cisco, and is even on Github. Looks like good times for Chez and Scheme!

igravious 9y ago
Great! The bulkiness must be because of the length of the commit history rather than a measure of how bloated it is. At least I hope!

didibus 9y ago

Is it logical to code in Racket vs just coding in Chez Scheme? How much does racket bring to the table on top?

igravious 9y ago
Racket is more an ecosystem of languages and includes DrRacket, the Racket programming environment. There's a ton of documentation: https://docs.racket-lang.org/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/ For instance Racket can take on the personality of R5RS, R6RS, or R7RS (among others) say. Edit: Maybe I misunderstood your question?
- didibus 9y ago
  I don't know Racket, nor Chez Scheme, but I've been wanting to learn one or the other. Now that Racket will just transpile to chez scheme, what's the advantage? Is there any reason for me to learn Racket instead of chez scheme? Like there's good reason for using Elm, TypeScirpt, Clojurescript over JavaScript directly. Or F# over C#, or Clojure over Java, etc. Is there similar advantage for Racket over Chez Scheme directly? At first glance it feels to me like no. Like the overhead of Racket not being the first class language of the backend might be a worst con then the slight language features it might have over Chez Scheme (if any). Is that true? That's what I'd like to know. Thanks.
  - igravious 9y ago
    As far as I'm aware Chez Scheme will become the language engine for the Racket family of languages replacing the current language engine. I mean, Racket used to be PLT Scheme, we're not talking a huge leap language-wise here, it's that the Chez Scheme back-end implementation is of very high quality. Racket has a lot of front-end stuff going on that Chez Scheme doesn't. I'm totally open to correction here from those with more familiarity. I am far from an expert on these matters. If you dig into the repos and docs that have been linked and read around for a bit you'll have as much knowledge as me :)
  - soegaard 9y ago