5 ms·

What specifically are your reservations? - I haven't played around with many Scheme implementations besides DrScheme/DrRacket so I'm not questioning your judgem

What specifically are your reservations? - I haven't played around with many Scheme implementations besides DrScheme/DrRacket so I'm not questioning your judgement, I'm just genuinely curious.

nsajko 12y ago
Bloat?
- gus_massa 12y ago
  You mean "batteries included"? :) [Disclaimer: I also like the idea of RSR7S small.] Just now there is a major reorganization in the Racket repository. The idea is to split it in a core part and may small packages. The objective is one day having many installers. For example one with only the minimal support for racket, one with everything including the kitchen sink, ...
  - samth 12y ago
    While indeed we are doing a major refactoring of the repository, the split into many packages has already happened. And you can download the Minimal Racket installer today!
- coldtea 12y ago
  You'll have to be more specific. Bloat is a content-less word for software. Most naive users complain about "bloat" for stuff like program file sizes on disk, not knowing that most of it is assets (icons, etc). Others think that having two many options in the menus, features etc slow the program down, not realizing that in most programs stuff is run and loaded dynamically, and a features you don't use don't affect the speed at all. Others yet think that only 20% of the features is needed (those that THEY use, of course) ignoring the fact that while a core set of features is common to all users, a large part of them are in non-overlapping set. E.g.: "Who needs a word-counter in Word?" -- well, if you're a journalist, it's your #1 more useful function.
ANTSANTS 12y ago
To expand a bit on "bloat," DrRacket does use a lot of memory for a text editor (don't have it installed ATM but I remember 100s of megabytes of memory in use in a typical light session of 1 file + 1 REPL), crashes somewhat frequently (a couple times in my test run, usually when trying out some of the crazier features hidden in the menus), and becomes less than responsive due to very frequent GC pauses (that are helpfully indicated by a little recycling icon in the corner of the window). I still think it's a far superior way to introduce newbies to Scheme than emacs, but it's definitely flawed.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  The old DrScheme editor was quite light, enough for me not to ever complain on underpowered AMD Sempron machine we had in college. The rewritten DrRacket really feels sluggish sometimes. I ended up using Emacs/Geiser for a MOOC.
- spdegabrielle 12y ago
  It comes with 'batteries included', and the defaults work fine on most modern machines. If you are really resource constrained it's easy to go to the settings and restrict memory use, and turn off tools you don't intend to use. If you have a really slow machine there is even a minimal DrRacket.
  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    My Ivy Bridge i7 with 16 gigs of RAM is not exactly resource constrained. I'll take your word for it that you can disable features to get the resource usage down, but it's kinda sad that the default config can't run without stuttering on a machine like that, especially since the program is intended to be used in education where the average machine is significantly less powerful than that.
  - leoc 12y ago
    Several batteries are missing, while others are leaking a bit.
Crito 12y ago
I love racket, but DrRacket is just too slow and memory heavy for my machines. My most powerful personal computer being a laptop with an 1.8GHz i5, and 4GB of ram. Yeah, that's very modest by 2014 standards, but I really think that it should be able to handle DrRacket better than it does. As it is, it is just too slow for me to put up with. I think that something that at least somewhat targets the education niche should be able to perform well on old hardware (the type of machine you might typically find in a university computer lab).
- marvy 12y ago
  I have an even wimpier computer (2GB ram, 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo). The start up time is large, and it will happily use a couple of hundred megs of RAM, but I never felt that it was too slow. Maybe I'm using an old version (5.1), but I doubt it's gotten much worse lately.
  - spdegabrielle 12y ago
    I had racket 5 running fine on an atom based eee pc. The most important thing is to turn off unused 'tools'. you can also restrict memory use by DrRacket. These days Minimal Racket does all the for you.
- soegaard 12y ago
  A few tips: 1) Turn off the background syntax checker (click the dot in the bottom right corner). 2) Turn off "Program contour" in the "View menu" if you happen to have it on. If that's not enough: 3) Use "Limit Memory" in the "Racket" menu to limit the memory use for the user program to say 256MB. 4) For more speed: In the language menu use "Choose language...", click the "Show details" button and turn ofd debugging. (But that's a last resort)
leoc 12y ago
Well, first, I'm talking about DrRacket the IDE here, not the Racket language. For context, at the moment I'm just using DrRacket in Racket mode as I try to bash out naive turnip-truck Scheme to generate some XHTML. DrRacket is certainly not bad, and it's perfectly usable for my purposes, but it has obvious shortcomings.
illicium 12y ago
The GUI is very slow: scrolling a ~500 line file on a C2D 2009 MBP with DrRacket 6 is (was) painful.

What specifically are your reservations? - I haven't played around with many Scheme implementations besides DrScheme/DrRacket so I'm not questioning your judgement, I'm just genuinely curious.

nsajko 12y ago

Bloat?

gus_massa 12y ago
You mean "batteries included"? :) [Disclaimer: I also like the idea of RSR7S small.] Just now there is a major reorganization in the Racket repository. The idea is to split it in a core part and may small packages. The objective is one day having many installers. For example one with only the minimal support for racket, one with everything including the kitchen sink, ...
- samth 12y ago
  While indeed we are doing a major refactoring of the repository, the split into many packages has already happened. And you can download the Minimal Racket installer today!
coldtea 12y ago
You'll have to be more specific. Bloat is a content-less word for software. Most naive users complain about "bloat" for stuff like program file sizes on disk, not knowing that most of it is assets (icons, etc). Others think that having two many options in the menus, features etc slow the program down, not realizing that in most programs stuff is run and loaded dynamically, and a features you don't use don't affect the speed at all. Others yet think that only 20% of the features is needed (those that THEY use, of course) ignoring the fact that while a core set of features is common to all users, a large part of them are in non-overlapping set. E.g.: "Who needs a word-counter in Word?" -- well, if you're a journalist, it's your #1 more useful function.

ANTSANTS 12y ago

To expand a bit on "bloat," DrRacket does use a lot of memory for a text editor (don't have it installed ATM but I remember 100s of megabytes of memory in use in a typical light session of 1 file + 1 REPL), crashes somewhat frequently (a couple times in my test run, usually when trying out some of the crazier features hidden in the menus), and becomes less than responsive due to very frequent GC pauses (that are helpfully indicated by a little recycling icon in the corner of the window). I still think it's a far superior way to introduce newbies to Scheme than emacs, but it's definitely flawed.

agumonkey 12y ago
The old DrScheme editor was quite light, enough for me not to ever complain on underpowered AMD Sempron machine we had in college. The rewritten DrRacket really feels sluggish sometimes. I ended up using Emacs/Geiser for a MOOC.
spdegabrielle 12y ago
It comes with 'batteries included', and the defaults work fine on most modern machines. If you are really resource constrained it's easy to go to the settings and restrict memory use, and turn off tools you don't intend to use. If you have a really slow machine there is even a minimal DrRacket.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  My Ivy Bridge i7 with 16 gigs of RAM is not exactly resource constrained. I'll take your word for it that you can disable features to get the resource usage down, but it's kinda sad that the default config can't run without stuttering on a machine like that, especially since the program is intended to be used in education where the average machine is significantly less powerful than that.
- leoc 12y ago
  Several batteries are missing, while others are leaking a bit.

Crito 12y ago

I love racket, but DrRacket is just too slow and memory heavy for my machines. My most powerful personal computer being a laptop with an 1.8GHz i5, and 4GB of ram. Yeah, that's very modest by 2014 standards, but I really think that it should be able to handle DrRacket better than it does. As it is, it is just too slow for me to put up with. I think that something that at least somewhat targets the education niche should be able to perform well on old hardware (the type of machine you might typically find in a university computer lab).

marvy 12y ago
I have an even wimpier computer (2GB ram, 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo). The start up time is large, and it will happily use a couple of hundred megs of RAM, but I never felt that it was too slow. Maybe I'm using an old version (5.1), but I doubt it's gotten much worse lately.
- spdegabrielle 12y ago
  I had racket 5 running fine on an atom based eee pc. The most important thing is to turn off unused 'tools'. you can also restrict memory use by DrRacket. These days Minimal Racket does all the for you.
soegaard 12y ago
A few tips: 1) Turn off the background syntax checker (click the dot in the bottom right corner). 2) Turn off "Program contour" in the "View menu" if you happen to have it on. If that's not enough: 3) Use "Limit Memory" in the "Racket" menu to limit the memory use for the user program to say 256MB. 4) For more speed: In the language menu use "Choose language...", click the "Show details" button and turn ofd debugging. (But that's a last resort)

leoc 12y ago

Well, first, I'm talking about DrRacket the IDE here, not the Racket language. For context, at the moment I'm just using DrRacket in Racket mode as I try to bash out naive turnip-truck Scheme to generate some XHTML. DrRacket is certainly not bad, and it's perfectly usable for my purposes, but it has obvious shortcomings.

illicium 12y ago

The GUI is very slow: scrolling a ~500 line file on a C2D 2009 MBP with DrRacket 6 is (was) painful.