6 ms·

This 2019 article is a bit out of date; what it calls racket2 is now Rhombus, and (as predicted in the article) does not seem to have really taken off. See htt

This 2019 article is a bit out of date; what it calls racket2 is now Rhombus, and (as predicted in the article) does not seem to have really taken off. See https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/thoughts-on-rhombus.html https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/thoughts-on-rhombus.htm... https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming

bhrgunatha 5y ago
I have a feeling it's on hiatus due to the switch to Chez Scheme, which probably took more time and effort than anticipated. The major reason given for that was easier maintenance in the future so now that's completed, I wonder whether the effort will now will be re-directed back to Rhombus.
- Decabytes 5y ago
  I believe you are right. I think Matthew Flatt mentioned it in one of his more recent talks. Chez scheme didn’t become the default implementation until Racket 8.0 which released Feb 2021 so it took awhile to iron out all the bugs. They are still in the brainstorming phase and you can look at the issues in this GitHub link https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming to see what is being discussed 1. https://blog.racket-lang.org/2021/02/racket-v8-0.html https://blog.racket-lang.org/2021/02/racket-v8-0.html
- Syzygies 5y ago
  Racket's fork of Chez Scheme now runs native on Apple M1 silicon. That's a remarkable feat; GHC Haskell for instance doesn't yet, and their blogs explain the difficulties. I keep a zoo of exotic languages, many of which must be build from source. I took a plunge buying an M1 Mac mini, imagining that emulation would hide the transition. Not so for the zoo. At least I have other machines. For actually using a language, one wants there to be a critical mass of sophisticated support. Racket has long had best-of-class documentation, but this technical feat of native M1 support is a serious feather in their cap.
  - jose_zap 5y ago
    Both GHC 8.10.5 and 8.10.6 run natively on M1
- samdphillips 5y ago
  Matthew has been working on a prototype (https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming/pull/163 https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming/pull/163) that works on the current snapshot version of Racket. It is possible to use to write some basic things and most existing Racket libraries are usable with the prototype.
Zababa 5y ago
I'm always a bit skeptic when I see relatively obscure programming languages trying to bring in new users. Are there any examples of something like this working in the last 10/20 years?
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5y ago
  Python (created in 1991), Ruby (1995). Both were relatively obscure until ~mid-2000s.
  - wsc981 5y ago
    Perhaps Lua counts as well, v1 released in 1994.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    As I've said to a sibling comment, I probably wasn't clear enough. What I meant is something like a language that's not well known, that does some work to appeal to more people, and then become more used. Both Ruby and Python seem to be made to appeal to people originally.
    - yissp 5y ago
      This makes me wonder what did cause Python's / Ruby's rise in popularity if there weren't any huge changes to the languages themselves in that time. I guess maybe the emergence of Rails in Ruby's case? And for Python, I don't know, Django? Numpy?
      - giancarlostoro 5y ago
        I think major libraries like Django or Rails are what push a language forward. Look at Go as a big example of this, it had a web server that was production ready built-in. People went with it and are still going with it. It's one of the things that attracts me to Racket above all other Lisp (or lisp like languages) because I can: make a server, make a gui, do front-end web styling all in Racket all out of the box. I also kind of like Clojure cause of Lein (a package manager that will install Clojure for you as long as you have the JVM setup, making your life stupidly easier). I think the stronger the standard library, the more likely your language will be adopted. If anyone out there is building a language and has strong funding, invest in database drivers and a strong web framework that compliments your language and showcases its capabilities. I would love for D's Vibe.d to be more polished, seems they got as far as they wanted to and stopped, I havent seen much new in half a decade compared to other web frameworks.

bhrgunatha 5y ago

I have a feeling it's on hiatus due to the switch to Chez Scheme, which probably took more time and effort than anticipated. The major reason given for that was easier maintenance in the future so now that's completed, I wonder whether the effort will now will be re-directed back to Rhombus.

Decabytes 5y ago
I believe you are right. I think Matthew Flatt mentioned it in one of his more recent talks. Chez scheme didn’t become the default implementation until Racket 8.0 which released Feb 2021 so it took awhile to iron out all the bugs. They are still in the brainstorming phase and you can look at the issues in this GitHub link https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming to see what is being discussed 1. https://blog.racket-lang.org/2021/02/racket-v8-0.html https://blog.racket-lang.org/2021/02/racket-v8-0.html
Syzygies 5y ago
Racket's fork of Chez Scheme now runs native on Apple M1 silicon. That's a remarkable feat; GHC Haskell for instance doesn't yet, and their blogs explain the difficulties. I keep a zoo of exotic languages, many of which must be build from source. I took a plunge buying an M1 Mac mini, imagining that emulation would hide the transition. Not so for the zoo. At least I have other machines. For actually using a language, one wants there to be a critical mass of sophisticated support. Racket has long had best-of-class documentation, but this technical feat of native M1 support is a serious feather in their cap.
- jose_zap 5y ago
  Both GHC 8.10.5 and 8.10.6 run natively on M1
samdphillips 5y ago
Matthew has been working on a prototype (https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming/pull/163 https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming/pull/163) that works on the current snapshot version of Racket. It is possible to use to write some basic things and most existing Racket libraries are usable with the prototype.

Zababa 5y ago

I'm always a bit skeptic when I see relatively obscure programming languages trying to bring in new users. Are there any examples of something like this working in the last 10/20 years?

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5y ago
Python (created in 1991), Ruby (1995). Both were relatively obscure until ~mid-2000s.
- wsc981 5y ago
  Perhaps Lua counts as well, v1 released in 1994.
- Zababa 5y ago
  As I've said to a sibling comment, I probably wasn't clear enough. What I meant is something like a language that's not well known, that does some work to appeal to more people, and then become more used. Both Ruby and Python seem to be made to appeal to people originally.
  - yissp 5y ago
    This makes me wonder what did cause Python's / Ruby's rise in popularity if there weren't any huge changes to the languages themselves in that time. I guess maybe the emergence of Rails in Ruby's case? And for Python, I don't know, Django? Numpy?
    - giancarlostoro 5y ago
      I think major libraries like Django or Rails are what push a language forward. Look at Go as a big example of this, it had a web server that was production ready built-in. People went with it and are still going with it. It's one of the things that attracts me to Racket above all other Lisp (or lisp like languages) because I can: make a server, make a gui, do front-end web styling all in Racket all out of the box. I also kind of like Clojure cause of Lein (a package manager that will install Clojure for you as long as you have the JVM setup, making your life stupidly easier). I think the stronger the standard library, the more likely your language will be adopted. If anyone out there is building a language and has strong funding, invest in database drivers and a strong web framework that compliments your language and showcases its capabilities. I would love for D's Vibe.d to be more polished, seems they got as far as they wanted to and stopped, I havent seen much new in half a decade compared to other web frameworks.