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Who are the current major users of Racket? Are there any large commercial codebases written in it?

by gaze 7y ago

baristaGeek 7y ago
I have no official data, but I don't think it's used beyond the academic and hobbyist level. However, I must say that understanding the functional paradigm (learning Racket is a really good exercise) can help developers write really professional software with Scala, Elixir, Clojure, etc.
neilv 7y ago
It's mostly used in various education projects, and various commercial and research projects that are largely done by a single strong programmer (e.g., Carmack-ish people). There's at least one large-codebase complex Web-based production system in it, which incidentally accomplished a first on AWS, but you've never heard of it, since it's internal-ish. It was a happy accident of history, that grew out of a lone super-productive programmer starting a complex data science infrastructure that I'd say few teams could've pulled off in a non-Lisp. I've been waiting for another startup to decide they're going to do their first version in Racket, to do something non-cookiecutter. (It turned out neither myself nor my own startup co-founder had any interest in doing the CEO side of things, or I would've launched such a startup already.) But anything Scheme-related has a terrible curse for perception: students associate it with academic oddities in first-year classes, and then they focus on whatever "real" tools they hear employers or other companies are using.
- jcadam 7y ago
  Next time I get an idea for a side project, I'm thinking of giving Racket a go. I've used Clojure on past personal projects (and currently at work), but I'm starting to grow weary of the JVM. If the next idea that comes to me happens to be/involve a web app, perhaps a Racket backend with a cljs frontend might be fun.
- dorian-graph 7y ago
  > .. that I'd say few teams could've pulled off in a non-Lisp. Would you mind expanding on this? (I’m not asking facetiously either)
- ajudson 7y ago
  which company has that internal application?
acbart 7y ago
I taught Racket last fall, and failed to find any major ongoing projects or products I could talk about with the students. It's really only used educational contexts and within its academic research cult, it seems to me. And the number of schools that are using it are dwindling.
VIPMaster 7y ago
Naughty Dog, the company behind the Uncharted series and The Last of Us, uses Racket (or so I was told ~4-5 years ago)
- neilv 7y ago
  The storytelling effectiveness of TLoU -- I was all misty-eyed at the end, and I realized I cared about the character I was protecting, not just playing a stealth shooter game -- is a credit to the entire holistic project. IIUC, they used an in-house narrative/scripting DSL that's written in Racket.
  - _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
    > they used an in-house narrative/scripting DSL that's written in Racket Given Racket's language-design focus, that seems like an ideal use.
jonathanstrange 7y ago
Well, my 10 year old spaghetti-code rewrite of my 22 year old password manager is written in Racket [1], but I don't think about 1/3 sales per year qualify as commercial. If I ever have the time, I'll rewrite it in another language with proper memory locking and better password stretching. [1] http://peppermind.com http://peppermind.com
gus_massa 7y ago
Hacker News is written in Arc that is written in Racket. More companies using Racket: https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Organizations-using-Racket https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Organizations-using-Ra...

Who are the current major users of Racket? Are there any large commercial codebases written in it?

by gaze 7y ago

Who are the current major users of Racket? Are there any large commercial codebases written in it?

I have no official data, but I don't think it's used beyond the academic and hobbyist level. However, I must say that understanding the functional paradigm (learning Racket is a really good exercise) can help developers write really professional software with Scala, Elixir, Clojure, etc.

neilv 7y ago

It's mostly used in various education projects, and various commercial and research projects that are largely done by a single strong programmer (e.g., Carmack-ish people). There's at least one large-codebase complex Web-based production system in it, which incidentally accomplished a first on AWS, but you've never heard of it, since it's internal-ish. It was a happy accident of history, that grew out of a lone super-productive programmer starting a complex data science infrastructure that I'd say few teams could've pulled off in a non-Lisp. I've been waiting for another startup to decide they're going to do their first version in Racket, to do something non-cookiecutter. (It turned out neither myself nor my own startup co-founder had any interest in doing the CEO side of things, or I would've launched such a startup already.) But anything Scheme-related has a terrible curse for perception: students associate it with academic oddities in first-year classes, and then they focus on whatever "real" tools they hear employers or other companies are using.

jcadam 7y ago
Next time I get an idea for a side project, I'm thinking of giving Racket a go. I've used Clojure on past personal projects (and currently at work), but I'm starting to grow weary of the JVM. If the next idea that comes to me happens to be/involve a web app, perhaps a Racket backend with a cljs frontend might be fun.
dorian-graph 7y ago
> .. that I'd say few teams could've pulled off in a non-Lisp. Would you mind expanding on this? (I’m not asking facetiously either)
ajudson 7y ago
which company has that internal application?

acbart 7y ago

I taught Racket last fall, and failed to find any major ongoing projects or products I could talk about with the students. It's really only used educational contexts and within its academic research cult, it seems to me. And the number of schools that are using it are dwindling.

VIPMaster 7y ago

Naughty Dog, the company behind the Uncharted series and The Last of Us, uses Racket (or so I was told ~4-5 years ago)

neilv 7y ago
The storytelling effectiveness of TLoU -- I was all misty-eyed at the end, and I realized I cared about the character I was protecting, not just playing a stealth shooter game -- is a credit to the entire holistic project. IIUC, they used an in-house narrative/scripting DSL that's written in Racket.
- _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
  > they used an in-house narrative/scripting DSL that's written in Racket Given Racket's language-design focus, that seems like an ideal use.

jonathanstrange 7y ago

Well, my 10 year old spaghetti-code rewrite of my 22 year old password manager is written in Racket [1], but I don't think about 1/3 sales per year qualify as commercial. If I ever have the time, I'll rewrite it in another language with proper memory locking and better password stretching. [1] http://peppermind.com http://peppermind.com

gus_massa 7y ago

Hacker News is written in Arc that is written in Racket. More companies using Racket: https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Organizations-using-Racket https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Organizations-using-Ra...