7 ms·

Racketscript

167 points by bwidlar 4y ago

mrtweetyhack 4y ago
mason96 4y ago
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  I don't know, a full stack Racket web app sounds fun to me. Why not?
- diordiderot 4y ago
  For the clout of course Check this out, react in clojure https://reagent-project.github.io/ https://reagent-project.github.io/
- BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
  Because they found it interesting and/or useful. The universe does not revolve around you.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    If you spin around in your chair, it kinda does.
  - mason96 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - yladiz 4y ago
      Oh yes, a Racket to JavaScript compiler is on the same level of “interesting” as the Holocaust. Not sure how I missed it before.
      - mason96 4y ago
        There are many examples. But what I'm trying to say is not everything interesting should be done. Maybe there is a legitimate purpose for this. That's what I'm trying to see. But you had to make it personal and attack me. So..
      - dang 4y ago
        "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        yladiz 4y ago
        Sorry. It got the better of me.
    - dang 4y ago
      We've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
      - mason96 4y ago
        I can stil use it
encryptluks2 4y ago
I'm not a huge fan of the scheme style programming languages although pretty standard even in Go templates because the parenthesis end up with ugly syntax that becomes difficult when using multiple levels, but Racket does seem cool. I found their guide on building web apps to be pretty amazing and I think that is what HN uses for their website.
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  > the parenthesis end up with ugly syntax that becomes difficult when using multiple levels This is really something you will get used to very quickly, and dare I say, learn to appreciate.
  - esjeon 4y ago
    > learn to appreciate. I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter. Also, when writing code, you can spam ")" to close functions/expressions. It takes only few brain cycles if the editor highlights matching parenthesis. This makes it easier to move code around. Copy-paste-))))))...
    - phyrex 4y ago
      You’re wrong in both points
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      >I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter. People see trees and not parens. People who complain about parens are still stuck in the "code is text" mind set rather than the "code is a tree" mind set. >Also, when writing code, you can spam ")" to close functions/expressions. It takes only few brain cycles if the editor highlights matching parenthesis. This makes it easier to move code around. Copy-paste-))))))... We've had editors since the 1970s that can take you to where a matching paren is closed. You then copy/paste the whole function without needing to add or remover parens.
jmercouris 4y ago
Reminds me a lot of Parenscript which we use heavily in Nyxt. Parenscript: https://cliki.net/Parenscript https://cliki.net/Parenscript
regular 4y ago
whateveracct 4y ago
JS basically is Scheme, after all.
- Hammershaft 4y ago
  We can only wish javascript was scheme. https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isnt-scheme/ https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isn...
  - bmitc 4y ago
    I've never understood how someone who supposedly liked, wanted, and had experience with Scheme ended up creating JavaScript, even being rushed to do so. This isn't a personal judgement. It's just that I don't understand it.
    - wiseowise 4y ago
      Suits wanted Java because nirmies.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Because customer said so.
    - speed_spread 4y ago
      Maybe 'that person' was against homoiconic marriage too.
    - kazinator 4y ago
      Here is what I don't understand: How someone who supposedly liked, wanted and had experience with Scheme ended up creating a language with a function-scoped var binding construct, which then took twenty more years to finally get a block-scoped let.
  - bmacho 4y ago
    tl;dr a list of random things, then stating that this proves that javascript is not basically a scheme. 4/10, effort appreciated.
martyalain 4y ago
It's said that the father of LISP, John McCarthy, lamented the W3C's choice of SGML as the basis for HTML : « An environment where the markup, styling and scripting is all s-expression based would be nice. » The {lambda way} project could be an answer, small and simple, a minimal enhanced text-editor: http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/ http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/
- capableweb 4y ago
  Every lisp (s-expressions really) fan would say most syntaxes/languages would be nicer if they were expressed in s-expressions instead of the c-like aberration most language copy, myself included. I guess McCarthy was simply the first to express that sentiment :)
noelwelsh 4y ago
The github page has more information: https://github.com/racketscript/racketscript https://github.com/racketscript/racketscript And to answer the questions every Schemer will have, no the runtime doesn't yet support tail calls or continuations.
- codeflo 4y ago
  Continuations I can live without, but is Scheme at all usable without tail calls?
  - neilv 4y ago
    Not normal idiomatic Scheme, but I suppose some programs might have in-practice stack usage bounded not too high. A Wasm target of the Chez/Racket compiler might be an easier way to get fast and proper evaluation in Web browsers.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    tail calls are a foreign concept to me, and I assume that's because I'm coming from JIT scripts where that's not a common way to think of optimization. Just reading a bit of what they are, it sounds like you're branching within a function to others that return something of the same type - common enough - but get a huge memory/ processing bonus when you branch as long as the sending function doesn't continue? Is that sort of it? I'm really intrigued as to how and where this plays a big role in day to day coding or whether it's just an optimization once you refactor everything at the end.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Basically it is just another way of doing gotos, while keeeping the abstraction of function calls, without the space required for recursion stack data structures. Having this as guarantee allows all the control flow concepts to be reduced to recursion and function calls. A kind of purity when we reduce a programing language to the basic set of primitives that provide the building blocks to create any kind of programming paradigm, this is in a way the beauty of Scheme, moreso than Lisp.
feeley 4y ago
If you want full Scheme running on top of JS in the browser: https://try.gambitscheme.org https://try.gambitscheme.org It has tail calls, continuations and even green threads (SRFI 18 compliant), and a decentralized module system that can load libraries directly from github and a JS FFI! See this paper for advanced examples that you can copy-paste to the REPL: http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers/BelangerFeeleyELS21.pdf http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers/BelangerFeeleyELS...

Racketscript

167 points by bwidlar 4y ago

mrtweetyhack 4y ago

mason96 4y ago

andrewflnr 4y ago
I don't know, a full stack Racket web app sounds fun to me. Why not?
diordiderot 4y ago
For the clout of course Check this out, react in clojure https://reagent-project.github.io/ https://reagent-project.github.io/
BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
Because they found it interesting and/or useful. The universe does not revolve around you.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  If you spin around in your chair, it kinda does.
- mason96 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - yladiz 4y ago
    Oh yes, a Racket to JavaScript compiler is on the same level of “interesting” as the Holocaust. Not sure how I missed it before.
    - mason96 4y ago
      There are many examples. But what I'm trying to say is not everything interesting should be done. Maybe there is a legitimate purpose for this. That's what I'm trying to see. But you had to make it personal and attack me. So..
    - dang 4y ago
      "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - yladiz 4y ago
        Sorry. It got the better of me.
  - dang 4y ago
    We've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
    - mason96 4y ago
      I can stil use it

encryptluks2 4y ago

I'm not a huge fan of the scheme style programming languages although pretty standard even in Go templates because the parenthesis end up with ugly syntax that becomes difficult when using multiple levels, but Racket does seem cool. I found their guide on building web apps to be pretty amazing and I think that is what HN uses for their website.

stingraycharles 4y ago
> the parenthesis end up with ugly syntax that becomes difficult when using multiple levels This is really something you will get used to very quickly, and dare I say, learn to appreciate.
- esjeon 4y ago
  > learn to appreciate. I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter. Also, when writing code, you can spam ")" to close functions/expressions. It takes only few brain cycles if the editor highlights matching parenthesis. This makes it easier to move code around. Copy-paste-))))))...
  - phyrex 4y ago
    You’re wrong in both points
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    >I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter. People see trees and not parens. People who complain about parens are still stuck in the "code is text" mind set rather than the "code is a tree" mind set. >Also, when writing code, you can spam ")" to close functions/expressions. It takes only few brain cycles if the editor highlights matching parenthesis. This makes it easier to move code around. Copy-paste-))))))... We've had editors since the 1970s that can take you to where a matching paren is closed. You then copy/paste the whole function without needing to add or remover parens.

jmercouris 4y ago

Reminds me a lot of Parenscript which we use heavily in Nyxt. Parenscript: https://cliki.net/Parenscript https://cliki.net/Parenscript

regular 4y ago

whateveracct 4y ago

JS basically is Scheme, after all.

Hammershaft 4y ago
We can only wish javascript was scheme. https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isnt-scheme/ https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isn...
- bmitc 4y ago
  I've never understood how someone who supposedly liked, wanted, and had experience with Scheme ended up creating JavaScript, even being rushed to do so. This isn't a personal judgement. It's just that I don't understand it.
  - wiseowise 4y ago
    Suits wanted Java because nirmies.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Because customer said so.
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    Maybe 'that person' was against homoiconic marriage too.
  - kazinator 4y ago
    Here is what I don't understand: How someone who supposedly liked, wanted and had experience with Scheme ended up creating a language with a function-scoped var binding construct, which then took twenty more years to finally get a block-scoped let.
- bmacho 4y ago
  tl;dr a list of random things, then stating that this proves that javascript is not basically a scheme. 4/10, effort appreciated.

martyalain 4y ago

It's said that the father of LISP, John McCarthy, lamented the W3C's choice of SGML as the basis for HTML : « An environment where the markup, styling and scripting is all s-expression based would be nice. » The {lambda way} project could be an answer, small and simple, a minimal enhanced text-editor: http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/ http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/

capableweb 4y ago
Every lisp (s-expressions really) fan would say most syntaxes/languages would be nicer if they were expressed in s-expressions instead of the c-like aberration most language copy, myself included. I guess McCarthy was simply the first to express that sentiment :)

noelwelsh 4y ago

The github page has more information: https://github.com/racketscript/racketscript https://github.com/racketscript/racketscript And to answer the questions every Schemer will have, no the runtime doesn't yet support tail calls or continuations.

codeflo 4y ago
Continuations I can live without, but is Scheme at all usable without tail calls?
- neilv 4y ago
  Not normal idiomatic Scheme, but I suppose some programs might have in-practice stack usage bounded not too high. A Wasm target of the Chez/Racket compiler might be an easier way to get fast and proper evaluation in Web browsers.
- noduerme 4y ago
  tail calls are a foreign concept to me, and I assume that's because I'm coming from JIT scripts where that's not a common way to think of optimization. Just reading a bit of what they are, it sounds like you're branching within a function to others that return something of the same type - common enough - but get a huge memory/ processing bonus when you branch as long as the sending function doesn't continue? Is that sort of it? I'm really intrigued as to how and where this plays a big role in day to day coding or whether it's just an optimization once you refactor everything at the end.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Basically it is just another way of doing gotos, while keeeping the abstraction of function calls, without the space required for recursion stack data structures. Having this as guarantee allows all the control flow concepts to be reduced to recursion and function calls. A kind of purity when we reduce a programing language to the basic set of primitives that provide the building blocks to create any kind of programming paradigm, this is in a way the beauty of Scheme, moreso than Lisp.

feeley 4y ago

If you want full Scheme running on top of JS in the browser: https://try.gambitscheme.org https://try.gambitscheme.org It has tail calls, continuations and even green threads (SRFI 18 compliant), and a decentralized module system that can load libraries directly from github and a JS FFI! See this paper for advanced examples that you can copy-paste to the REPL: http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers/BelangerFeeleyELS21.pdf http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers/BelangerFeeleyELS...