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As someone who did my first CS course in HtDP, it's nice to see new versions like this. Looks like the community is active and lively too. Which makes me curio

As someone who did my first CS course in HtDP, it's nice to see new versions like this. Looks like the community is active and lively too. Which makes me curious...outside of teaching and PL research, is anyone else using Racket? Has it been used in other CS research fields perhaps? Some of the items in this changeset makes me think it might be used in numeric computation/stats modelling. Is it seeing some use in the industry as well? It seems to have a pretty extensive ecosystem but are the libraries mature? Would love to hear what/how people have been using Racket.

seisvelas 5y ago
I use it for quick scripts. I do offensive security. It's a pleasant option when doing things other pentesters would do in Python or Go. >It seems to have a pretty extensive ecosystem but are the libraries mature? If you're just doing API calls, file IO, simple networking, then it's more than you'll ever need. If I'm doing something obscure enough to have to worry 'is there a mature library for this in Racket?' I'll just use Python at that point.
kkylin 5y ago
AFAIK HN itself runs on Arc (http://arclanguage.org/ http://arclanguage.org/), which is implemented in Racket (formerly in PLT). Does that count? Edit: in addition, I used PLT (Racket's predecessor) for my own scientific computing needs, e.g., plotting, providing a front end to simulators written in C, etc. I didn't make the switch to Racket because it broke a lot of code and I didn't have time to rewrite everything. Limped along until Julia became a thing, and now that's what I use. And yes, could have (and did) use Python, but I really prefer writing Scheme to Python when possible.
smabie 5y ago
I used Racket for bioinformatics research maybe 8 years ago a big hospital. Never seen it used outside of academia though really.
spfzero 5y ago
Using it for maybe five years as my primary language for tools, simulators, testing embedded devices, games, etc. compared to common lisp, clojure, etc. it’s just less overhead for modules, packaging, compiling to executables... I would love to move more into common lisp but it seems like 20 steps to create a binary in the foss world, and expensive to do so in the Allegro/LispWorks world. Happy to pay for dev tools, but paying to distribute your program? No thanks.
- strawhatguy 5y ago
  I don't think you have to pay to distribute in LispWorks, beyond buying the full license, did that change?
  - spfzero 5y ago
    I may have mixed up the two, but one of Allegro or Lispworks mentioned additional licensing. Or I might have mistook the required license upgrade if you distribute, for a run-time license.
TurboHaskal 5y ago
I use it for simple cross platform graphical applications.
gus_massa 5y ago
I'm using Racket for a small site for T.A. in my department (~500). They can select which class to go the next semester.
soegaard 5y ago
Yes, several companies are using Racket. https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Organizations-using-Racket https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Organizations-using-Ra...
jambutters 5y ago
the biggest adoption it would have gotten is that it was going to be used the main language of vrscripting https://youtu.be/ydyztGZnbNs https://youtu.be/ydyztGZnbNs but it seems like john couldnt push it everyone into it

seisvelas 5y ago

I use it for quick scripts. I do offensive security. It's a pleasant option when doing things other pentesters would do in Python or Go. >It seems to have a pretty extensive ecosystem but are the libraries mature? If you're just doing API calls, file IO, simple networking, then it's more than you'll ever need. If I'm doing something obscure enough to have to worry 'is there a mature library for this in Racket?' I'll just use Python at that point.

kkylin 5y ago

AFAIK HN itself runs on Arc (http://arclanguage.org/ http://arclanguage.org/), which is implemented in Racket (formerly in PLT). Does that count? Edit: in addition, I used PLT (Racket's predecessor) for my own scientific computing needs, e.g., plotting, providing a front end to simulators written in C, etc. I didn't make the switch to Racket because it broke a lot of code and I didn't have time to rewrite everything. Limped along until Julia became a thing, and now that's what I use. And yes, could have (and did) use Python, but I really prefer writing Scheme to Python when possible.

smabie 5y ago

I used Racket for bioinformatics research maybe 8 years ago a big hospital. Never seen it used outside of academia though really.

spfzero 5y ago

Using it for maybe five years as my primary language for tools, simulators, testing embedded devices, games, etc. compared to common lisp, clojure, etc. it’s just less overhead for modules, packaging, compiling to executables... I would love to move more into common lisp but it seems like 20 steps to create a binary in the foss world, and expensive to do so in the Allegro/LispWorks world. Happy to pay for dev tools, but paying to distribute your program? No thanks.

strawhatguy 5y ago
I don't think you have to pay to distribute in LispWorks, beyond buying the full license, did that change?
- spfzero 5y ago
  I may have mixed up the two, but one of Allegro or Lispworks mentioned additional licensing. Or I might have mistook the required license upgrade if you distribute, for a run-time license.

TurboHaskal 5y ago

I use it for simple cross platform graphical applications.

gus_massa 5y ago

I'm using Racket for a small site for T.A. in my department (~500). They can select which class to go the next semester.

soegaard 5y ago

Yes, several companies are using Racket. https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Organizations-using-Racket https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Organizations-using-Ra...

jambutters 5y ago

the biggest adoption it would have gotten is that it was going to be used the main language of vrscripting https://youtu.be/ydyztGZnbNs https://youtu.be/ydyztGZnbNs but it seems like john couldnt push it everyone into it