11 ms·

New Racket Language Website

326 points by kamaal 6y ago

emccue 6y ago
Weird nitpick, but "No Makefiles required" is an odd selling point to me. I haven't seen or used a Makefile in eons, and I would wager a decent chunk of programmers never needed to. I'm not sure how to describe the feeling this creates. Like...I can feel the authors other experiences shine through or something to that effect. There was a talk awhile ago by John A. De Goes where he asserted roughly that Scala's then pitch of "combines object oriented and functional programming" was basically gobbledygook from the standpoint of "why would I use this language." https://youtu.be/v8IQ-X2HkGE https://youtu.be/v8IQ-X2HkGE I feel much the same way about Racket. Cool, very advanced DSLs and mini languages...what does that give me? What can I do with that? Most of the page is dedicated to justifying "no wait everyone, we have the bare minimum number of libraries" or waxing poetic about the mini language concept. What is the reason to use this over a less "lexically powerful" lisp like Clojure? What is the reason to use this over one of the boring old stalwarts like Java or Python? Can I read from a Kafka queue? Can I call into AWS? Google Cloud? How strong are the libraries, and what would I have to commit to writing myself? I actually do not understand why I would use Racket, and this page doesn't help.
- outworlder 6y ago
  > I actually do not understand why I would use Racket You don't HAVE to. But if you are interested, maybe this would help: https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/why-racket-why-lisp.html https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/why-racket-why-lisp.htm... EDIT: Also, if you want a look at the dialects, check out the comic here: http://landoflisp.com/ http://landoflisp.com/ Be advised that it is extremely difficult to "sell" Lisp and related languages to someone that hasn't bought the idea yet. No-one seems to have found a winning formula. All people see are the parentheses (although, for some reason, they don't see the ocean of []{}(); in other languages). The normal experience is: you get tired of hearing about all those people preaching about Lisp(or Scheme) and decide to see for yourself. You take the plunge. You slave away at a book or two (or tutorials) trying to grasp the language. And then, at some point, it all just "clicks" into place and you see the light! That's what's its all about! But then you start trying to explain it to other people... and you have exactly the same problem. All those features you now know about and can't live without? They are either difficult to explain without explaining more concepts, or they just don't see the value compared to what they are used to. "What do you mean, code is data? Code is not data, I use JSON for that." Which is understandable. After all, if you are writing Scheme, you can easily see the value. You know how Java can spend years (and sometimes over a decade, see lambda) to get a new language feature? Well, with very few exceptions, you can do it yourself. You know 'for each'? A Scheme(or lisp) programmer could solve that in 5 minutes with a macro. But you can't, because you are not a Lisp programmer yet. Similarly you probably see no problem at all with having YAML with a C program and maybe a scripting language too. Whereas a Lisp programmer would see that as a waste and just want to use S-Expressions for everything. Sometimes including HTML and CSS representation. And maybe more. But there's an opportunity cost. Up to you if you want to pay for that. What convinced me and I found it to be true: Lisp or Scheme (and I guess Haskell) _will_ make you a better programmer even if you don't end up using them in your day to day. It will expose you to concepts that you may not be familiar with - or may not had the opportunity to practice. This is, again, subjective. Up to you. All programming languages are Turing-complete anyway.
  - emccue 6y ago
    To be clear, I'm no stranger to Lisps. I use Clojure a ton for personal stuff and on occasion have found ways to sneak it in to production. The difference there is that Clojure isn't responsible for giving a wide enough ecosystem to justify investment, it just yoinks it from Java. Racket doesn't have that ecosystem and probably never will. Macros on the level of common lisp and clojure are already found in those places. Racket gives, and seems to base it's pitch around, a far more flexible hammer than classic lisp macros. But it doesn't do anything to offset the downsides of a small community or justify why that more powerful "actual mini language" level DSL is something to care about. I am well aware of how macros can let you add your own language features and conveniences specific to your project. Homoiconicity is an all around neat property to have. I'm just not buying a "beating the averages" style "you just see it as blub" explanation either. Mini languages do have niche uses. I acknowledge that. ANTLR wouldn't have users if they didn't. It's just not something I think is worth writing home about.
jiangplus 6y ago
I think that the website of the io language is one of the most expressive ones. https://iolanguage.org/ https://iolanguage.org/
nyanpasu64 6y ago
Ironic how Racket's new homepage includes a multilingual print example, whereas Rust's redesign removed it.
Buttons840 6y ago
Is there still a blog / news section? I don't see a link to those?
- pryelluw 6y ago
  Its in the footer: https://blog.racket-lang.org/ https://blog.racket-lang.org/
- azhenley 6y ago
  If you click the "Community" tab it is listed. More hidden than it used to be.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
I'm relieved they didn't change the documentation. Hard to improve on perfection. https://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/index.html https://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/index.html Also, I chuckled a bit at the "Jet Fueled" tagline. Racket's green threads operate with a "fuel" which gets consumed over time, at which point it yields to another thread. I think the metaphor was a happy accident rather than an intentional nerdy reference, but still.
- nahuel0x 6y ago
  The engine/fuel terminology is not new, it comes from the 1986 paper "Abstracting Timed Preemption with Engines" / Christopher T. Haynes, Daniel P. Friedman: ftp://ftp.extreme.indiana.edu/pub/techreports/TR178.pdf
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    I absolutely adore that this link isn't clickable, yet it works when you copy-paste it into Chrome. @dang, here's an updated version of valid-url which will make the link clickable: (defmemo valid-url (url) (and (len> url 10) (or (begins url "http://") (begins url "https://") (begins url "ftp://")) (~find [in _ #\< #\> #\" #\'] url))) I doubt it'll get merged, but you never know. It looks like the other change necessary is in the `markdown` function. It checks: (and (or (litmatch "http://" s i) (litmatch "https://" s i) You'd need to add: (litmatch "ftp://" s i) If you grep the codebase for "https" then it'll reveal any other functions that need updates, but these are the only two in arc3.1. Of course, the cost-benefit doesn't quite add up here – it's not like ftp links are too common. But think of the poor university FTP servers! They'll be forever doomed to copy-paste-hell unless this is fixed. :-(
    - the_pwner224 6y ago
      Firefox removed FTP support some months ago. Ironically when I copy paste that link it now prompts me to open it in Chromium.
agumonkey 6y ago
nice spin on the proglang homepage, 'KISS
submeta 6y ago
Beautifully made. Like the font. And how legible it is on mobile devices. - Learned Scheme and worked through SICP with its predecessor DrScheme twenty years ago. - Keep up the good work.
- MarkyC4 6y ago
  portrait tablet/landscape mobile could use some work (it's a bit squished) https://i.imgur.com/KLSZ33H.png https://i.imgur.com/KLSZ33H.png https://i.imgur.com/b9HXnfj.png https://i.imgur.com/b9HXnfj.png
didip 6y ago
It looks great! If I may offer a suggestion, it could use a "play" section where people can start getting to know the language right away without installing anything.
- gus_massa 6y ago
  There are a few unofficial sites, for example PasteRack http://pasterack.org/ http://pasterack.org/. (A example of Fibonacci: http://pasterack.org/pastes/89478 http://pasterack.org/pastes/89478 )
  - grugagag 6y ago
    There is also wescheme: https://www.wescheme.org/openEditor https://www.wescheme.org/openEditor
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      It doesn't accept #lang racket Is it possible to use the equivalent of other variants like #lang typed/racket
- miloandmilk 6y ago
  Yep it looks great, really crisp - +1 for the play section!
hitekker 6y ago
A compressed header that looks good on mobile? Wow. The rest of the design looks well crafted too.
benatkin 6y ago
If it has a photo where people aren't wearing masks and/or social distancing, it doesn't feel new to me.
- superdisk 6y ago
  I went to look at the picture and noticed I'm actually in it! Cool. The pic was taken at RacketCon 2018.
jakearmitage 6y ago
The #lang thing is super interesting. What happens with conflicts, though? Can I use multiple #lang? What if they have functions with the same names?
- PuercoPop 6y ago
  You can use multiple #langs, in separate files. The name collision is unrelated to the #lang of the file. It is handled by the module system.
Naac 6y ago
I believe this is the source code for the Racket lang website: https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-org https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-org
discardable_dan 6y ago
Compare it to other big language websites, like Kotlin [1] or Go [2], this page really seems to have a poor signal to noise ratio. There is a lot of information on this landing page, and a lot of it is getting in the way. For a language, I want to know (a) features, (b) documentation / how to learn, (c) community. This website leads with this, but does so under playful headings ("jet-fueled") that just lead to more click-through links, and then immediately, on the landing page, jumps into advanced features (easy DSLs, IDE support, etc.). 2/3 of this landing page could be removed, and I suspect it would be a better landing page for it. In addition, it suffers from a poor use of vertical space (you will see the word "Racket" in a large font with plenty of padding 4 times on the main page), poor usage and indication of navigation (it has 4 navbars, which are not apparently navigation but appear to be "selling points" until your mouse moves over them, due to their being attached to headings), and poor use of navigation (reflowing the main page nave when you click on nav items). Compare this to Kotlin and Go's sites, which state the name, gives a snappy summary of the language, and then links off to more information. In the case of Kotlin, which is closer to Racket's site, it presents immediate links to extensive, example-driven write-ups about the most-important features on subpages, uses the remaining of the "first page" space on a "try it now" box, and then proceeds along vertical space (free in a browser) to demonstrate the most-important features. Finally, a smaller complaint: this website feels like it was made in Photoshop in the mid-00s, complete with text-image navigation bars sliced out of tables and drop shadows. I know someone put a lot of work into making divs look like that, but there are very good reasons why the industry has moved away from that design. 1. https://kotlinlang.org/ https://kotlinlang.org/ 2. https://golang.org/ https://golang.org/
- petre 6y ago
  Kotlin's website just opens new tabs and lost my interest in about two seconds and Go's isn't that great either. I like the new Racket webpage. It's got code, it's got links.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Language websites are meaningless to me. I pick languages based on frameworks and platform SDKs. The language is a side effect of the ecosystem being targeted. Otherwise it is just like picking books based on the cover.
dependenttypes 6y ago
I think that it is quite nice, much better than most most modern sites (it does not seem to require js for example and it loads quickly) and I prefer it to the older one. My only is that it makes poor use of horizontal space - my screen is bigger horizontally than vertically, so much space goes wasted. In addition I would suggest offering more examples of sublanguages, such as of #lang racket/gui which the last site included. Anyway, good work!
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Apparently I either missed it or they added it afterwards. It contains a really nice example of #lang racket/gui next to the logo.
miloandmilk 6y ago
I don't use Racket every day - but I use many of the things I learnt from HTDP every single day. Great language guided by some very generous people.
valbaca 6y ago
Looking good! potential off-topic but this make me think of this: Can one work through SICP using Racket?
- Scarbutt 6y ago
  Yep, will even say is the best enviroment for SICP.
- vvillena 6y ago
  There's a #lang sicp in Racket that emulates the Scheme of the SICP book, with all the functions you need.
  - neilv 6y ago
    https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/
- kaeland 6y ago
  I found this SICP guide helpful in terms of choosing which lisp to work through the book: https://github.com/zv/SICP-guile https://github.com/zv/SICP-guile
- spdegabrielle 6y ago
  yes see https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/
cpill 6y ago
Oh boy, what the world needs now: another Clojure. How is it going to compete with the raging success of that :D
- aspaceman 6y ago
  If I had a nickel for every time I've shown someone Racket and they half-assedly respond, "Oh like Clojure"... We should be better than this as a field.
- vga805 6y ago
  If you have nothing productive to say, don't comment. It really is that simple. And Racket is almost a decade older than Clojure.
- rscho 6y ago
  ...and if you had a single clue about all that you'd know that Racket and Clojure are very different and that Racket is a strong player in the academic world.
- outworlder 6y ago
  Was this sarcasm?
cek 6y ago
My son was required to use Racket in his course work for Computer Engineering at CalPoly. I had never heard of it before. I recall one of the profs was involved. We joked that it all sounded like a racket. He's now a rising-star (proud/biased papa here) as an SDE at Amazon. So maybe it's a good teaching language after all.
- ska 6y ago
  Racket is an evolution/rebranding of a scheme variant (Dr Scheme) - or rather family of them - specifically designed for pedagogy. It's got a pretty good multiple decade history in that space, fwiw.
- rscho 6y ago
  The community has strong emphasis on teaching. I'm just a hobbyist, but transitioning from python allowed me to improve much faster and discover new horizons.
- linguae 6y ago
  I'm also a Cal Poly graduate (computer science) who learned Racket (called PLT Scheme back when I was a Cal Poly student) from Professor John Clements (https://www.brinckerhoff.org https://www.brinckerhoff.org), who was involved with PLT Scheme. We used the textbook Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation, which can be found at http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/ http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/. I'm sorry to say that at the time I took the course, I didn't appreciate it. I loved coding in C and I thought Scheme was weird. But after taking programming languages from Professor Clements, I then took his compilers course. Our first assignment was to implement a Scheme interpreter in a week. We were allowed to use any programming language we wanted. Since I was tired of Scheme, my lab partner and I decided to implement the interpreter in C++. Big mistake....we spent 40 hours on that project, building complex class inheritance hierarchies and not being able to take advantage of many of the features that made writing an interpreter in Scheme a relative breeze. I never complained about writing code in Scheme again. When I moved on to UC Santa Cruz for grad school, my experience with Professor Clements' programming languages and compilers courses made my required graduate programming language course with type theory expert Cormac Flanagan a relatively smooth experience; going from Scheme to Haskell wasn't too difficult. Sometime afterwards I got bit very hard by the programming languages bug. I'm now working on a side project in Common Lisp, and interestingly enough, I'm actually teaching a programming language paradigms course at San Jose State University this semester where I'll be teaching my students Scheme, Prolog, and Smalltalk, as well as other goodies such as the lambda calculus. All of this would have not been possible had I not been taught Scheme and functional programming by Professor John Clements. If he is reading this, I thank him immensely for the impact his courses have had on my career. I just wish I had appreciated the courses back when I took them, but over a decade later, I strongly appreciate them, and they're among the most valuable courses I had at Cal Poly.
saagarjha 6y ago
Perhaps they could come up with something different for the first header? Because saying "Racket, the Language-Oriented Programming Language" right after "Racket, the Programming Language" seems a little too similar.
- grok22 6y ago
  That seems intentional -- the 2nd header is to highlight that it has features that help in creating your own language variant (and is a big-part of it's many strengths).
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Yeah, I think it is–however, it's still strange to have those two and then the third "Racket, the Ecosystem" that doesn't seem to fit the pattern.
    - grok22 6y ago
      The are section titles and features regarding that section are listed right below it. It's a bit repetitive, but still trying to highlight the things that make Racket a great language.
chromatin 6y ago
Would Racket be an appropriate first language for a thoughtful 11 year old who has the gift of abstract thought (relatively; we are not talking Haskell here) ?
- aspaceman 6y ago
  I would think so, but it's hard to say. It depends on their own ability to figure things out and your ability to explain. Python is easier to google and more powerful, but Racket is like a really elegant and complete idea. I think the latter would have been more helpful when I was getting started, but it's really, really hard to say.
- scns 6y ago
  There is a two part course on edx.org taught by Gregor Kiczales. The first one is called How to Code Simple Data.
- codr7 6y ago
  I would say Lisp is a fine beginners language, but it all depends on the teacher. One reason why SICP works so well is that the authors are very passionate about Lisp. K&R accomplishes sort of the same thing for C. Many languages have these kinds of books. I got into Lisp from reading Paul Grahams essays and books. One of my younger brothers eventually found his way into programming heaven via Bash scripts. My point is the medium matters less.
- rscho 6y ago
  I'm just a passionate hobbyist, but I'd say yes. The integrated environment makes it very easy to get started, the package manager makes using libs trivial and there are DSLs for basically all programming paradigms under the sun. In my opinion, nothing beats it. You even have pictures in the REPL.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  It could be but I think python would be better.
- jswrenn 6y ago
codazoda 6y ago
I didn't sign in too far, but isn't the first line of code on their landing page a typo? (define my-language 'English) Looks like it's missing a closing single quote. I suppose it could be optional.
- vvillena 6y ago
  Strings in Lisp are surrounded with double quotes. In this case, 'English is not a string, but a symbol. Symbols are arbitrary flags with readable names. There are lots of languages with symbols. Some of them even use the same syntax, like Scala (symbol usage in Scala is uncommon, though). However, the most prominent non-Lisp language that uses symbols all the time is probably Ruby.
  - kazinator 6y ago
    Well, rather, english is not a string, but a symbol. Because symbols denote variable names in Lisp code, the expression english calls for the value of english. If we want the value of the expression to be the english symbol object itself, we need (quote english). Because that is too verbose for a language in which symbolic processing is prime time, there is a shorthand prefix notation for it, 'english.
  - lispm 6y ago
    > 'English is not a string, but a symbol 'ENGLISH is not a symbol, it's actually a shorter notation for the list (QUOTE ENGLISH). But it evaluates to a symbol: ENGLISH
- thomas11 6y ago
  The code is correct. That's a Lisp thing called `quote`. https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/Pairs__Lists__and_Racket_Syntax.html#%28part._.Abbreviating_quote_with__%29 https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/Pairs__Lists__and_Racket_...
lukeplato 6y ago
Always been curious, how do people decide between racket vs. scheme vs. common lisp anyway?
- neilv 6y ago
  First, Racket was originally called PLT Scheme, but then added a lot of stuff, and then broke some standards compatibility. (I'm currently interested in moving back to more-portable Scheme, possibly using Racket as my default Scheme implementation.) There are huge differences between Scheme and CL, and you can usually tell when, say, a person good with CL is writing Scheme code. (Disclaimer: I've used both languages professionally, and am a Scheme expert, but am a CL novice, other than my experience using various Lisps.) One of the differences is size: You can sit down in half an hour and skim through the R5RS paper (skipping the scary sections on formal semantics and on first-class continuations), and be ready to sit in front of Scheme and start programming, even if you initially won't be writing idiomatic Scheme. Though you do need to add a lot more library to Scheme to do real-world things, the core language is small and elegant. There's also noticeably different idiomatic programming. An idiomatic Scheme programmer might do things like avoid mutations, leverage tail call optimization, use only hygienic macros (syntax extension) and maybe fancy tools for that (e.g., `syntax-parse`), not use dynamic capabilities of the language so much, never go and optimize by looking at native code generation (though Racket now has tools for looking at bytecode/IR), and use simpler language features for many things (not know and leverage the CLOS MOP, nor make complicated `LOOP` uses). If I was doing a startup with a Lisp for my launch, I'd personally use a Scheme (maybe Racket), because I happen to already know all the big&small things I need to DIY and manage, to make it viable for things like Web startups. For CL, those things would be different, but I think also doable and more proven already. I do think I could get a team up to speed on Scheme faster than CL, because I can say "This week, use the core language, plus these packages, and then next week there's some non-obvious idiomatic stuff that I'd like to propose we learn, but I have to explain it, because it's not in any book I know of."

326 points by kamaal 6y ago

Weird nitpick, but "No Makefiles required" is an odd selling point to me. I haven't seen or used a Makefile in eons, and I would wager a decent chunk of programmers never needed to. I'm not sure how to describe the feeling this creates. Like...I can feel the authors other experiences shine through or something to that effect. There was a talk awhile ago by John A. De Goes where he asserted roughly that Scala's then pitch of "combines object oriented and functional programming" was basically gobbledygook from the standpoint of "why would I use this language." https://youtu.be/v8IQ-X2HkGE https://youtu.be/v8IQ-X2HkGE I feel much the same way about Racket. Cool, very advanced DSLs and mini languages...what does that give me? What can I do with that? Most of the page is dedicated to justifying "no wait everyone, we have the bare minimum number of libraries" or waxing poetic about the mini language concept. What is the reason to use this over a less "lexically powerful" lisp like Clojure? What is the reason to use this over one of the boring old stalwarts like Java or Python? Can I read from a Kafka queue? Can I call into AWS? Google Cloud? How strong are the libraries, and what would I have to commit to writing myself? I actually do not understand why I would use Racket, and this page doesn't help.

outworlder 6y ago
> I actually do not understand why I would use Racket You don't HAVE to. But if you are interested, maybe this would help: https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/why-racket-why-lisp.html https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/why-racket-why-lisp.htm... EDIT: Also, if you want a look at the dialects, check out the comic here: http://landoflisp.com/ http://landoflisp.com/ Be advised that it is extremely difficult to "sell" Lisp and related languages to someone that hasn't bought the idea yet. No-one seems to have found a winning formula. All people see are the parentheses (although, for some reason, they don't see the ocean of []{}(); in other languages). The normal experience is: you get tired of hearing about all those people preaching about Lisp(or Scheme) and decide to see for yourself. You take the plunge. You slave away at a book or two (or tutorials) trying to grasp the language. And then, at some point, it all just "clicks" into place and you see the light! That's what's its all about! But then you start trying to explain it to other people... and you have exactly the same problem. All those features you now know about and can't live without? They are either difficult to explain without explaining more concepts, or they just don't see the value compared to what they are used to. "What do you mean, code is data? Code is not data, I use JSON for that." Which is understandable. After all, if you are writing Scheme, you can easily see the value. You know how Java can spend years (and sometimes over a decade, see lambda) to get a new language feature? Well, with very few exceptions, you can do it yourself. You know 'for each'? A Scheme(or lisp) programmer could solve that in 5 minutes with a macro. But you can't, because you are not a Lisp programmer yet. Similarly you probably see no problem at all with having YAML with a C program and maybe a scripting language too. Whereas a Lisp programmer would see that as a waste and just want to use S-Expressions for everything. Sometimes including HTML and CSS representation. And maybe more. But there's an opportunity cost. Up to you if you want to pay for that. What convinced me and I found it to be true: Lisp or Scheme (and I guess Haskell) _will_ make you a better programmer even if you don't end up using them in your day to day. It will expose you to concepts that you may not be familiar with - or may not had the opportunity to practice. This is, again, subjective. Up to you. All programming languages are Turing-complete anyway.
- emccue 6y ago
  To be clear, I'm no stranger to Lisps. I use Clojure a ton for personal stuff and on occasion have found ways to sneak it in to production. The difference there is that Clojure isn't responsible for giving a wide enough ecosystem to justify investment, it just yoinks it from Java. Racket doesn't have that ecosystem and probably never will. Macros on the level of common lisp and clojure are already found in those places. Racket gives, and seems to base it's pitch around, a far more flexible hammer than classic lisp macros. But it doesn't do anything to offset the downsides of a small community or justify why that more powerful "actual mini language" level DSL is something to care about. I am well aware of how macros can let you add your own language features and conveniences specific to your project. Homoiconicity is an all around neat property to have. I'm just not buying a "beating the averages" style "you just see it as blub" explanation either. Mini languages do have niche uses. I acknowledge that. ANTLR wouldn't have users if they didn't. It's just not something I think is worth writing home about.

jiangplus 6y ago

I think that the website of the io language is one of the most expressive ones. https://iolanguage.org/ https://iolanguage.org/

nyanpasu64 6y ago

Ironic how Racket's new homepage includes a multilingual print example, whereas Rust's redesign removed it.

Buttons840 6y ago

Is there still a blog / news section? I don't see a link to those?

pryelluw 6y ago
Its in the footer: https://blog.racket-lang.org/ https://blog.racket-lang.org/
azhenley 6y ago
If you click the "Community" tab it is listed. More hidden than it used to be.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

I'm relieved they didn't change the documentation. Hard to improve on perfection. https://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/index.html https://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/index.html Also, I chuckled a bit at the "Jet Fueled" tagline. Racket's green threads operate with a "fuel" which gets consumed over time, at which point it yields to another thread. I think the metaphor was a happy accident rather than an intentional nerdy reference, but still.

nahuel0x 6y ago
The engine/fuel terminology is not new, it comes from the 1986 paper "Abstracting Timed Preemption with Engines" / Christopher T. Haynes, Daniel P. Friedman: ftp://ftp.extreme.indiana.edu/pub/techreports/TR178.pdf
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  I absolutely adore that this link isn't clickable, yet it works when you copy-paste it into Chrome. @dang, here's an updated version of valid-url which will make the link clickable: (defmemo valid-url (url) (and (len> url 10) (or (begins url "http://") (begins url "https://") (begins url "ftp://")) (~find [in _ #\< #\> #\" #\'] url))) I doubt it'll get merged, but you never know. It looks like the other change necessary is in the `markdown` function. It checks: (and (or (litmatch "http://" s i) (litmatch "https://" s i) You'd need to add: (litmatch "ftp://" s i) If you grep the codebase for "https" then it'll reveal any other functions that need updates, but these are the only two in arc3.1. Of course, the cost-benefit doesn't quite add up here – it's not like ftp links are too common. But think of the poor university FTP servers! They'll be forever doomed to copy-paste-hell unless this is fixed. :-(
  - the_pwner224 6y ago
    Firefox removed FTP support some months ago. Ironically when I copy paste that link it now prompts me to open it in Chromium.

agumonkey 6y ago

nice spin on the proglang homepage, 'KISS

submeta 6y ago

Beautifully made. Like the font. And how legible it is on mobile devices. - Learned Scheme and worked through SICP with its predecessor DrScheme twenty years ago. - Keep up the good work.

MarkyC4 6y ago
portrait tablet/landscape mobile could use some work (it's a bit squished) https://i.imgur.com/KLSZ33H.png https://i.imgur.com/KLSZ33H.png https://i.imgur.com/b9HXnfj.png https://i.imgur.com/b9HXnfj.png

didip 6y ago

It looks great! If I may offer a suggestion, it could use a "play" section where people can start getting to know the language right away without installing anything.

gus_massa 6y ago
There are a few unofficial sites, for example PasteRack http://pasterack.org/ http://pasterack.org/. (A example of Fibonacci: http://pasterack.org/pastes/89478 http://pasterack.org/pastes/89478 )
- grugagag 6y ago
  There is also wescheme: https://www.wescheme.org/openEditor https://www.wescheme.org/openEditor
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    It doesn't accept #lang racket Is it possible to use the equivalent of other variants like #lang typed/racket
miloandmilk 6y ago
Yep it looks great, really crisp - +1 for the play section!

hitekker 6y ago

A compressed header that looks good on mobile? Wow. The rest of the design looks well crafted too.

benatkin 6y ago

If it has a photo where people aren't wearing masks and/or social distancing, it doesn't feel new to me.

superdisk 6y ago
I went to look at the picture and noticed I'm actually in it! Cool. The pic was taken at RacketCon 2018.

jakearmitage 6y ago

The #lang thing is super interesting. What happens with conflicts, though? Can I use multiple #lang? What if they have functions with the same names?

PuercoPop 6y ago
You can use multiple #langs, in separate files. The name collision is unrelated to the #lang of the file. It is handled by the module system.

Naac 6y ago

I believe this is the source code for the Racket lang website: https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-org https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-org

discardable_dan 6y ago

Compare it to other big language websites, like Kotlin [1] or Go [2], this page really seems to have a poor signal to noise ratio. There is a lot of information on this landing page, and a lot of it is getting in the way. For a language, I want to know (a) features, (b) documentation / how to learn, (c) community. This website leads with this, but does so under playful headings ("jet-fueled") that just lead to more click-through links, and then immediately, on the landing page, jumps into advanced features (easy DSLs, IDE support, etc.). 2/3 of this landing page could be removed, and I suspect it would be a better landing page for it. In addition, it suffers from a poor use of vertical space (you will see the word "Racket" in a large font with plenty of padding 4 times on the main page), poor usage and indication of navigation (it has 4 navbars, which are not apparently navigation but appear to be "selling points" until your mouse moves over them, due to their being attached to headings), and poor use of navigation (reflowing the main page nave when you click on nav items). Compare this to Kotlin and Go's sites, which state the name, gives a snappy summary of the language, and then links off to more information. In the case of Kotlin, which is closer to Racket's site, it presents immediate links to extensive, example-driven write-ups about the most-important features on subpages, uses the remaining of the "first page" space on a "try it now" box, and then proceeds along vertical space (free in a browser) to demonstrate the most-important features. Finally, a smaller complaint: this website feels like it was made in Photoshop in the mid-00s, complete with text-image navigation bars sliced out of tables and drop shadows. I know someone put a lot of work into making divs look like that, but there are very good reasons why the industry has moved away from that design. 1. https://kotlinlang.org/ https://kotlinlang.org/ 2. https://golang.org/ https://golang.org/

petre 6y ago
Kotlin's website just opens new tabs and lost my interest in about two seconds and Go's isn't that great either. I like the new Racket webpage. It's got code, it's got links.
pjmlp 6y ago
Language websites are meaningless to me. I pick languages based on frameworks and platform SDKs. The language is a side effect of the ecosystem being targeted. Otherwise it is just like picking books based on the cover.

dependenttypes 6y ago

I think that it is quite nice, much better than most most modern sites (it does not seem to require js for example and it loads quickly) and I prefer it to the older one. My only is that it makes poor use of horizontal space - my screen is bigger horizontally than vertically, so much space goes wasted. In addition I would suggest offering more examples of sublanguages, such as of #lang racket/gui which the last site included. Anyway, good work!

dependenttypes 6y ago
Apparently I either missed it or they added it afterwards. It contains a really nice example of #lang racket/gui next to the logo.

miloandmilk 6y ago

I don't use Racket every day - but I use many of the things I learnt from HTDP every single day. Great language guided by some very generous people.

valbaca 6y ago

Looking good! potential off-topic but this make me think of this: Can one work through SICP using Racket?

Scarbutt 6y ago
Yep, will even say is the best enviroment for SICP.
vvillena 6y ago
There's a #lang sicp in Racket that emulates the Scheme of the SICP book, with all the functions you need.
- neilv 6y ago
  https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/
kaeland 6y ago
I found this SICP guide helpful in terms of choosing which lisp to work through the book: https://github.com/zv/SICP-guile https://github.com/zv/SICP-guile
spdegabrielle 6y ago
yes see https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/

cpill 6y ago

Oh boy, what the world needs now: another Clojure. How is it going to compete with the raging success of that :D

aspaceman 6y ago
If I had a nickel for every time I've shown someone Racket and they half-assedly respond, "Oh like Clojure"... We should be better than this as a field.
vga805 6y ago
If you have nothing productive to say, don't comment. It really is that simple. And Racket is almost a decade older than Clojure.
rscho 6y ago
...and if you had a single clue about all that you'd know that Racket and Clojure are very different and that Racket is a strong player in the academic world.
outworlder 6y ago
Was this sarcasm?

cek 6y ago

My son was required to use Racket in his course work for Computer Engineering at CalPoly. I had never heard of it before. I recall one of the profs was involved. We joked that it all sounded like a racket. He's now a rising-star (proud/biased papa here) as an SDE at Amazon. So maybe it's a good teaching language after all.

ska 6y ago
Racket is an evolution/rebranding of a scheme variant (Dr Scheme) - or rather family of them - specifically designed for pedagogy. It's got a pretty good multiple decade history in that space, fwiw.
rscho 6y ago
The community has strong emphasis on teaching. I'm just a hobbyist, but transitioning from python allowed me to improve much faster and discover new horizons.
linguae 6y ago
I'm also a Cal Poly graduate (computer science) who learned Racket (called PLT Scheme back when I was a Cal Poly student) from Professor John Clements (https://www.brinckerhoff.org https://www.brinckerhoff.org), who was involved with PLT Scheme. We used the textbook Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation, which can be found at http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/ http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/. I'm sorry to say that at the time I took the course, I didn't appreciate it. I loved coding in C and I thought Scheme was weird. But after taking programming languages from Professor Clements, I then took his compilers course. Our first assignment was to implement a Scheme interpreter in a week. We were allowed to use any programming language we wanted. Since I was tired of Scheme, my lab partner and I decided to implement the interpreter in C++. Big mistake....we spent 40 hours on that project, building complex class inheritance hierarchies and not being able to take advantage of many of the features that made writing an interpreter in Scheme a relative breeze. I never complained about writing code in Scheme again. When I moved on to UC Santa Cruz for grad school, my experience with Professor Clements' programming languages and compilers courses made my required graduate programming language course with type theory expert Cormac Flanagan a relatively smooth experience; going from Scheme to Haskell wasn't too difficult. Sometime afterwards I got bit very hard by the programming languages bug. I'm now working on a side project in Common Lisp, and interestingly enough, I'm actually teaching a programming language paradigms course at San Jose State University this semester where I'll be teaching my students Scheme, Prolog, and Smalltalk, as well as other goodies such as the lambda calculus. All of this would have not been possible had I not been taught Scheme and functional programming by Professor John Clements. If he is reading this, I thank him immensely for the impact his courses have had on my career. I just wish I had appreciated the courses back when I took them, but over a decade later, I strongly appreciate them, and they're among the most valuable courses I had at Cal Poly.

saagarjha 6y ago

Perhaps they could come up with something different for the first header? Because saying "Racket, the Language-Oriented Programming Language" right after "Racket, the Programming Language" seems a little too similar.

grok22 6y ago
That seems intentional -- the 2nd header is to highlight that it has features that help in creating your own language variant (and is a big-part of it's many strengths).
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Yeah, I think it is–however, it's still strange to have those two and then the third "Racket, the Ecosystem" that doesn't seem to fit the pattern.
  - grok22 6y ago
    The are section titles and features regarding that section are listed right below it. It's a bit repetitive, but still trying to highlight the things that make Racket a great language.

chromatin 6y ago

Would Racket be an appropriate first language for a thoughtful 11 year old who has the gift of abstract thought (relatively; we are not talking Haskell here) ?

aspaceman 6y ago
I would think so, but it's hard to say. It depends on their own ability to figure things out and your ability to explain. Python is easier to google and more powerful, but Racket is like a really elegant and complete idea. I think the latter would have been more helpful when I was getting started, but it's really, really hard to say.
scns 6y ago
There is a two part course on edx.org taught by Gregor Kiczales. The first one is called How to Code Simple Data.
codr7 6y ago
I would say Lisp is a fine beginners language, but it all depends on the teacher. One reason why SICP works so well is that the authors are very passionate about Lisp. K&R accomplishes sort of the same thing for C. Many languages have these kinds of books. I got into Lisp from reading Paul Grahams essays and books. One of my younger brothers eventually found his way into programming heaven via Bash scripts. My point is the medium matters less.
rscho 6y ago
I'm just a passionate hobbyist, but I'd say yes. The integrated environment makes it very easy to get started, the package manager makes using libs trivial and there are DSLs for basically all programming paradigms under the sun. In my opinion, nothing beats it. You even have pictures in the REPL.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
It could be but I think python would be better.
jswrenn 6y ago

codazoda 6y ago

I didn't sign in too far, but isn't the first line of code on their landing page a typo? (define my-language 'English) Looks like it's missing a closing single quote. I suppose it could be optional.

vvillena 6y ago
Strings in Lisp are surrounded with double quotes. In this case, 'English is not a string, but a symbol. Symbols are arbitrary flags with readable names. There are lots of languages with symbols. Some of them even use the same syntax, like Scala (symbol usage in Scala is uncommon, though). However, the most prominent non-Lisp language that uses symbols all the time is probably Ruby.
- kazinator 6y ago
  Well, rather, english is not a string, but a symbol. Because symbols denote variable names in Lisp code, the expression english calls for the value of english. If we want the value of the expression to be the english symbol object itself, we need (quote english). Because that is too verbose for a language in which symbolic processing is prime time, there is a shorthand prefix notation for it, 'english.
- lispm 6y ago
  > 'English is not a string, but a symbol 'ENGLISH is not a symbol, it's actually a shorter notation for the list (QUOTE ENGLISH). But it evaluates to a symbol: ENGLISH
thomas11 6y ago
The code is correct. That's a Lisp thing called `quote`. https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/Pairs__Lists__and_Racket_Syntax.html#%28part._.Abbreviating_quote_with__%29 https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/Pairs__Lists__and_Racket_...

lukeplato 6y ago

Always been curious, how do people decide between racket vs. scheme vs. common lisp anyway?

neilv 6y ago
First, Racket was originally called PLT Scheme, but then added a lot of stuff, and then broke some standards compatibility. (I'm currently interested in moving back to more-portable Scheme, possibly using Racket as my default Scheme implementation.) There are huge differences between Scheme and CL, and you can usually tell when, say, a person good with CL is writing Scheme code. (Disclaimer: I've used both languages professionally, and am a Scheme expert, but am a CL novice, other than my experience using various Lisps.) One of the differences is size: You can sit down in half an hour and skim through the R5RS paper (skipping the scary sections on formal semantics and on first-class continuations), and be ready to sit in front of Scheme and start programming, even if you initially won't be writing idiomatic Scheme. Though you do need to add a lot more library to Scheme to do real-world things, the core language is small and elegant. There's also noticeably different idiomatic programming. An idiomatic Scheme programmer might do things like avoid mutations, leverage tail call optimization, use only hygienic macros (syntax extension) and maybe fancy tools for that (e.g., `syntax-parse`), not use dynamic capabilities of the language so much, never go and optimize by looking at native code generation (though Racket now has tools for looking at bytecode/IR), and use simpler language features for many things (not know and leverage the CLOS MOP, nor make complicated `LOOP` uses). If I was doing a startup with a Lisp for my launch, I'd personally use a Scheme (maybe Racket), because I happen to already know all the big&small things I need to DIY and manage, to make it viable for things like Web startups. For CL, those things would be different, but I think also doable and more proven already. I do think I could get a team up to speed on Scheme faster than CL, because I can say "This week, use the core language, plus these packages, and then next week there's some non-obvious idiomatic stuff that I'd like to propose we learn, but I have to explain it, because it's not in any book I know of."