21 ms·

It looks more like a "program" for an HP15c pocket scientific calculator. Not necessarily a bad thing but also not exactly what I would call "expressive". You

It looks more like a "program" for an HP15c pocket scientific calculator. Not necessarily a bad thing but also not exactly what I would call "expressive". You may be able to build anything you want --- which may be efficient when communicating with the machine. But I wonder about now well this would communicate with other programmers.

jibal 2mo ago
It's not a program, it is (obviously) a totally unrealistic hodgepodge expression for a list of constant values that simply demonstrates the literal syntax for a variety of types of values (real numbers, dotted pairs, rational numbers, complex numbers, polar coordinates, etc. -- Racket is unusually expressive in the types of literals). Your comment demonstrates something typical of HN, and it's not a good thing. It's as if in a discussion about C someone posted, without explanation, an entry from the Obfuscated C contest and then someone else, making zero effort to understand what was posted, said that it looked like line noise and questioned whether C is conducive to communication between programmers.
- euduhdhbene 2mo ago
  First time dealing with developers I see. I’m sorry.
  - jibal 2mo ago
    Nonsensical non sequitur ad hominem. (FWIW I've been a software developer for 60 years and have dealt with many of them.) I won't respond further.
    - euduhdhbene 2mo ago
      Apologies sir, it was uncalled for. The plebeian in me couldn’t resist. I am deeply jaded by my experience, but as you seem to imply your experience is different I am glad for you.
- zelphirkalt 2mo ago
  I think in this case it is probably justified, as the claim of "no special syntax" is unfortunately not true. To convey the amount of special syntax, it got crammed into one brief example snippet. Still, far less than most other programming languages, virtue of having parentheses making things unambiguous. Outliers are Smalltalk and maybe (?) Forth.
  - jibal 2mo ago
    > I think in this case it is probably justified What is "it"? The GP clearly doesn't understand that code and utterly misconstrues its nature and the nature of the Racket/Scheme/LISP language. If someone has zero knowledge of the topic at hand (even when it's a seminal programming language that's been around for nearly 70 years), they have an obligation to at least glance at TFA before commenting. > the claim of "no special syntax" is unfortunately not true That's a completely different issue than the one I addressed. (And I really don't think the point is made in good faith--the sense in which that phrase was meant is well understood, certainly by the GGP who is so very familiar with Racket's token syntax and quasiquotes.) I won't respond further.
  - so-cal-schemer 2mo ago
    Aren't reader macros just a convenient shorthand?
Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
I actually wrote an audio sequencer in HP RPL as a kid. It was far less complex to code, and human readable. Unicon was pretty cool also, but never became popular. Erlang/Elixir will probably become more relevant as people move into massively parallel constraint solvers. The monolith centric languages are simply no longer appropriate for many classes of problems. =3
- jqpabc123 2mo ago
  Unicon was pretty cool also, but never became popular. Like it or not, popularity is a significant attribute if you have to work with others.
  - Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
    >popularity is a significant attribute if you have to work with others Not sure why people buried your comment, but there is a good argument for long term support. NodeJS is probably the worst to maintain if you cater to the lowest common denominator. Easy to show quick results with a low skill team, but generally anyone that can't be bothered to use other languages is going to cause reliability problems sooner or later. Ecosystems like pip/Cargo/Go-flavor-of-the-year/npm that run out-of-band dependency management will have deferred perpetual IT costs. =3

jibal 2mo ago

It's not a program, it is (obviously) a totally unrealistic hodgepodge expression for a list of constant values that simply demonstrates the literal syntax for a variety of types of values (real numbers, dotted pairs, rational numbers, complex numbers, polar coordinates, etc. -- Racket is unusually expressive in the types of literals). Your comment demonstrates something typical of HN, and it's not a good thing. It's as if in a discussion about C someone posted, without explanation, an entry from the Obfuscated C contest and then someone else, making zero effort to understand what was posted, said that it looked like line noise and questioned whether C is conducive to communication between programmers.

euduhdhbene 2mo ago
First time dealing with developers I see. I’m sorry.
- jibal 2mo ago
  Nonsensical non sequitur ad hominem. (FWIW I've been a software developer for 60 years and have dealt with many of them.) I won't respond further.
  - euduhdhbene 2mo ago
    Apologies sir, it was uncalled for. The plebeian in me couldn’t resist. I am deeply jaded by my experience, but as you seem to imply your experience is different I am glad for you.
zelphirkalt 2mo ago
I think in this case it is probably justified, as the claim of "no special syntax" is unfortunately not true. To convey the amount of special syntax, it got crammed into one brief example snippet. Still, far less than most other programming languages, virtue of having parentheses making things unambiguous. Outliers are Smalltalk and maybe (?) Forth.
- jibal 2mo ago
  > I think in this case it is probably justified What is "it"? The GP clearly doesn't understand that code and utterly misconstrues its nature and the nature of the Racket/Scheme/LISP language. If someone has zero knowledge of the topic at hand (even when it's a seminal programming language that's been around for nearly 70 years), they have an obligation to at least glance at TFA before commenting. > the claim of "no special syntax" is unfortunately not true That's a completely different issue than the one I addressed. (And I really don't think the point is made in good faith--the sense in which that phrase was meant is well understood, certainly by the GGP who is so very familiar with Racket's token syntax and quasiquotes.) I won't respond further.
- so-cal-schemer 2mo ago
  Aren't reader macros just a convenient shorthand?

Joel_Mckay 2mo ago

I actually wrote an audio sequencer in HP RPL as a kid. It was far less complex to code, and human readable. Unicon was pretty cool also, but never became popular. Erlang/Elixir will probably become more relevant as people move into massively parallel constraint solvers. The monolith centric languages are simply no longer appropriate for many classes of problems. =3

jqpabc123 2mo ago
Unicon was pretty cool also, but never became popular. Like it or not, popularity is a significant attribute if you have to work with others.
- Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
  >popularity is a significant attribute if you have to work with others Not sure why people buried your comment, but there is a good argument for long term support. NodeJS is probably the worst to maintain if you cater to the lowest common denominator. Easy to show quick results with a low skill team, but generally anyone that can't be bothered to use other languages is going to cause reliability problems sooner or later. Ecosystems like pip/Cargo/Go-flavor-of-the-year/npm that run out-of-band dependency management will have deferred perpetual IT costs. =3