4 ms·

I'm fascinated by Racket-lang team's constant updates. It feels like there is always some activity in that space. Does anyone know about any companies where it'

by jp0d 4y ago

I'm fascinated by Racket-lang team's constant updates. It feels like there is always some activity in that space. Does anyone know about any companies where it's used in production environments? Is it particularly good for certain use cases? Thank you.

exdsq 4y ago
I looked a while ago and apart from some scripting at Naughty Dog it sounded like it's strictly used in academia and hobby projects. It is however probably my favourite language at the moment and if you're willing to learn something for fun, I recommend it. I've learned a few things that are language-agnostic, like some streaming stuff, so I guess it's not a total waste purely from a work perspective either.
- jp0d 4y ago
  Yes, of course. Glad you're enjoying programming in it. I'd love to learn it for fun if I didn't have any time constraints. Dabbling in a bit of StandardML and F# at the moment. Just to get a basic understanding of functional programming. I'm a data analyst, not a developer. So as you can guess, I write Python and SQL mostly. These languages are quite different from what I'm used to.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    I keep responding to you just by your comments triggering some things I am interested in, lol, but if you're interested in data science and F#, check out .NET Interactive notebooks in Visual Studio Code and the Plotly.NET package.
    - jp0d 4y ago
      hahaha.. Thank you for comment. Yes, I actually signed up for a course on Udemy and did some F# after a few lessons on SML from Dan Grossman on Coursera. My company has bet big on .net and our products have been developed on .Net. So that's another reason to learn F# for me. I find it quite interesting and am surprised that it doesn't have as much adoption as Python or R!
  - exdsq 4y ago
    One thing I loved when looking at F# was Type-Driven Development that I imagine could be quite applicable to data modelling (as in, piping stuff around and sanitising). This has possibly had the biggest impact on how I think about programming out of anything I've done! https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/designing-with-types/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/designing-with-type... You might also find this interesting: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/recipe-part2/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/recipe-part2/ Another thing - if you find you write small scripts in Python to read a file or parse some stuff or plot a couple things but these aren't for production, Racket has an amazing library of basically everything you could need. It's actually very practical as a scripting language.
    - jp0d 4y ago
      Thanks mate. :)
- samth 4y ago
  It's not widely used in industry, but certainly some people do use. Bogdanp, commenting further down, has a business using racket, other people do web development consulting with it, people have built internal tools with it, etc.
neilv 4y ago
The activity is mostly the core professors doing research, a lot of teachers and students, and a number of enthusiasts. It's been used by only a handful of companies that I know of (not counting Naughty Dog). Usually as one-person projects for which the person is allowed to choose fringe tools. A couple of those turned into major projects, but they still needed only a couple/few (super-capable) people. Maybe the most interesting thing about the user base is the enthusiasts: as a resume keyword, Racket is effectively unemployable, and there's large opportunity cost in the current "tech" job market, of spending time on "technology" that doesn't facilitate job-hopping. So the enthusiasm seems to be for the genuine technical and community merits.
- danuker 4y ago
  > So the enthusiasm seems to be for the genuine technical and community merits. Or just fun. People also play and create free games on the Internet.
skrishnamurthi 4y ago
See the presentations at the annual RacketCon's. That gives you a sense of some of the industrial uses.

by jp0d 4y ago

exdsq 4y ago

I looked a while ago and apart from some scripting at Naughty Dog it sounded like it's strictly used in academia and hobby projects. It is however probably my favourite language at the moment and if you're willing to learn something for fun, I recommend it. I've learned a few things that are language-agnostic, like some streaming stuff, so I guess it's not a total waste purely from a work perspective either.

jp0d 4y ago
Yes, of course. Glad you're enjoying programming in it. I'd love to learn it for fun if I didn't have any time constraints. Dabbling in a bit of StandardML and F# at the moment. Just to get a basic understanding of functional programming. I'm a data analyst, not a developer. So as you can guess, I write Python and SQL mostly. These languages are quite different from what I'm used to.
- bmitc 4y ago
  I keep responding to you just by your comments triggering some things I am interested in, lol, but if you're interested in data science and F#, check out .NET Interactive notebooks in Visual Studio Code and the Plotly.NET package.
  - jp0d 4y ago
    hahaha.. Thank you for comment. Yes, I actually signed up for a course on Udemy and did some F# after a few lessons on SML from Dan Grossman on Coursera. My company has bet big on .net and our products have been developed on .Net. So that's another reason to learn F# for me. I find it quite interesting and am surprised that it doesn't have as much adoption as Python or R!
- exdsq 4y ago
  One thing I loved when looking at F# was Type-Driven Development that I imagine could be quite applicable to data modelling (as in, piping stuff around and sanitising). This has possibly had the biggest impact on how I think about programming out of anything I've done! https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/designing-with-types/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/designing-with-type... You might also find this interesting: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/recipe-part2/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/recipe-part2/ Another thing - if you find you write small scripts in Python to read a file or parse some stuff or plot a couple things but these aren't for production, Racket has an amazing library of basically everything you could need. It's actually very practical as a scripting language.
  - jp0d 4y ago
    Thanks mate. :)
samth 4y ago
It's not widely used in industry, but certainly some people do use. Bogdanp, commenting further down, has a business using racket, other people do web development consulting with it, people have built internal tools with it, etc.

neilv 4y ago

The activity is mostly the core professors doing research, a lot of teachers and students, and a number of enthusiasts. It's been used by only a handful of companies that I know of (not counting Naughty Dog). Usually as one-person projects for which the person is allowed to choose fringe tools. A couple of those turned into major projects, but they still needed only a couple/few (super-capable) people. Maybe the most interesting thing about the user base is the enthusiasts: as a resume keyword, Racket is effectively unemployable, and there's large opportunity cost in the current "tech" job market, of spending time on "technology" that doesn't facilitate job-hopping. So the enthusiasm seems to be for the genuine technical and community merits.

danuker 4y ago
> So the enthusiasm seems to be for the genuine technical and community merits. Or just fun. People also play and create free games on the Internet.

skrishnamurthi 4y ago

See the presentations at the annual RacketCon's. That gives you a sense of some of the industrial uses.