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Carmack has a secret affection for Lisps I think. A while back he wrote about programming in lisp on his iPad (which is nicely suited to editing S-expressions)

Carmack has a secret affection for Lisps I think. A while back he wrote about programming in lisp on his iPad (which is nicely suited to editing S-expressions). Anyway, Carmack has convinced me to take a look at Racket again. When I looked at it a few years back, it seemed nobody was using it.

dogma1138 12y ago
Well the only other thing i know of which is written in Racket is HN. So not sure if it's any popular today either. IMO it looks like were getting too many damn programming languages which is something I'm starting to really dislike. Too much shit flying around forcing you to pickup some niche languages for a project, and worse having fresh developers being forced to learn like a billion languages instead of mastering 1 or 2.
- kenferry 12y ago
  Hacker News is (was?) written in Arc, no?
  - jeorgun 12y ago
    IIRC the Arc interpreter is itself written in Racket.
  - fjarlq 12y ago
    Correct, HN is written in Arc, a dialect of Lisp. But, the Arc compiler is written in Racket[1], and internally outputs Racket code[2]. "mzscheme"[3] is an early version of PLT Scheme, aka Racket. [1] https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/master/ac.scm https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/master/ac.scm [2] http://arclanguage.org/item?id=14608 http://arclanguage.org/item?id=14608 [3] http://docs.racket-lang.org/mzscheme/ http://docs.racket-lang.org/mzscheme/
- andrewchambers 12y ago
  Learn scheme and you can handle all lisps, learn C/C++ and you can handle all the imperative languages, learn ocaml/haskell and you can handle the rest. That is 3 languages to master.
  - FreeFull 12y ago
    Until you come to Prolog, or APL/J/K and realise that none of these languages have fully prepared you either. And then there are other things out there too, that will leave you learning all over again.
    - jevgeni 12y ago
      I have this ritual every year or so, where I try to write J, sigh, and go back to pedestrian F#.
      - eggy 12y ago
        I always do one-liner stuff in J, and I keep trying to get into F#. I recently bought Dyalog's APL. I thought the symbols would get in the way, but it's a whole other door opening. I really like the array-oriented languages for math and science. Even Julia and Numpy are attempts to do what the APL/J/K family have always done. I've always had Racket on my machine, before it was called Racket. Having an IDE and a good standard library right off the bat is great for beginners and dabblers like myself. I do not program for a living. I only program when I have a math or engineering problem to solve.
        jevgeni 12y ago
        Racket is amazing, I agree. :)
    - jwdunne 12y ago
      APL and friends blew my mind when I read about them. I remember thinking "You can do all that with just those characters? That's the same length as the word function"! It's a good job I read this far down, I made a mental note to learn J but, as usual, forgot it by the time I got home. Thanks!
- serf 12y ago
  >IMO it looks like were getting too many damn programming languages which is something I'm starting to really dislike. Are there more now? I remember a zillion niche pet languages from forever ago. Now a days I see less, probably because it's not in-style to write an in house scripting language for every single new project, they tend to just use a language that is nice off the shelf.
- 59nadir 12y ago
  While I understand your frustration with 'too many languages', Racket is older than quite a few (started in '95). I also think the danger of having this attitude is that if we all thought like this nothing would become better. If no one wanted to get out of C++ we wouldn't have had many languages. The premise behind Racket, in broad strokes, is to provide a platform and programming language for making new programming languages. The most important identifier/keyword in Racket is '#lang' (specified at the top of a file to tell Racket which language the file is in). It's a whole ecosystem in which a multitude of languages exist and the only thing they really need to have in common is that on some level they speak Racket. Personally, I think the above paragraph explains how exciting Racket as a language and platform is, but it doesn't sound that interesting on the surface. It does allow people to create things like this[0] and this[1], though, which displays real practical use; shaping the way you solve the problem to fit the actual problem. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmqbnhHp1c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmqbnhHp1c - Naughty Dog's scripting language [1] http://pollenpub.com/ http://pollenpub.com/ - A web book publishing language
speeder 12y ago
Not really secret, there is even an article about how to try to make Functional C++ that he wrote.
AceJohnny2 12y ago
> on his iPad (which is nicely suited to editing S-expressions) How so? I'm curious.
- projectileboy 12y ago
  There's a fun iPad app called Lisping that let's you play with different flavors of Lisp. Not really a programming environment, but it's sort of neat for trying out ideas.
  - chadzawistowski 12y ago
    How does that get around the iOS App store restriction on interpreted code?
    - rsynnott 12y ago
      I assume they got around that restriction by cunningly releasing it after that restriction was abandoned in 2010...
      - chadzawistowski 12y ago
        Ah, my inexperience with Apple's platforms is showing.
    - AceJohnny2 12y ago
      Is that still a thing? I thought they relented?
    - edvinbesic 12y ago
      I belive that restriction was lifted quite a while ago, like in 2010 or something. It didn't last long as game engines required the use of scripting languages for game logic, among other things. Apple simply had to cave in.
      - paines 12y ago

dogma1138 12y ago

Well the only other thing i know of which is written in Racket is HN. So not sure if it's any popular today either. IMO it looks like were getting too many damn programming languages which is something I'm starting to really dislike. Too much shit flying around forcing you to pickup some niche languages for a project, and worse having fresh developers being forced to learn like a billion languages instead of mastering 1 or 2.

kenferry 12y ago
Hacker News is (was?) written in Arc, no?
- jeorgun 12y ago
  IIRC the Arc interpreter is itself written in Racket.
- fjarlq 12y ago
  Correct, HN is written in Arc, a dialect of Lisp. But, the Arc compiler is written in Racket[1], and internally outputs Racket code[2]. "mzscheme"[3] is an early version of PLT Scheme, aka Racket. [1] https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/master/ac.scm https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/master/ac.scm [2] http://arclanguage.org/item?id=14608 http://arclanguage.org/item?id=14608 [3] http://docs.racket-lang.org/mzscheme/ http://docs.racket-lang.org/mzscheme/
andrewchambers 12y ago
Learn scheme and you can handle all lisps, learn C/C++ and you can handle all the imperative languages, learn ocaml/haskell and you can handle the rest. That is 3 languages to master.
- FreeFull 12y ago
  Until you come to Prolog, or APL/J/K and realise that none of these languages have fully prepared you either. And then there are other things out there too, that will leave you learning all over again.
  - jevgeni 12y ago
    I have this ritual every year or so, where I try to write J, sigh, and go back to pedestrian F#.
    - eggy 12y ago
      I always do one-liner stuff in J, and I keep trying to get into F#. I recently bought Dyalog's APL. I thought the symbols would get in the way, but it's a whole other door opening. I really like the array-oriented languages for math and science. Even Julia and Numpy are attempts to do what the APL/J/K family have always done. I've always had Racket on my machine, before it was called Racket. Having an IDE and a good standard library right off the bat is great for beginners and dabblers like myself. I do not program for a living. I only program when I have a math or engineering problem to solve.
      - jevgeni 12y ago
        Racket is amazing, I agree. :)
  - jwdunne 12y ago
    APL and friends blew my mind when I read about them. I remember thinking "You can do all that with just those characters? That's the same length as the word function"! It's a good job I read this far down, I made a mental note to learn J but, as usual, forgot it by the time I got home. Thanks!
serf 12y ago
>IMO it looks like were getting too many damn programming languages which is something I'm starting to really dislike. Are there more now? I remember a zillion niche pet languages from forever ago. Now a days I see less, probably because it's not in-style to write an in house scripting language for every single new project, they tend to just use a language that is nice off the shelf.
59nadir 12y ago
While I understand your frustration with 'too many languages', Racket is older than quite a few (started in '95). I also think the danger of having this attitude is that if we all thought like this nothing would become better. If no one wanted to get out of C++ we wouldn't have had many languages. The premise behind Racket, in broad strokes, is to provide a platform and programming language for making new programming languages. The most important identifier/keyword in Racket is '#lang' (specified at the top of a file to tell Racket which language the file is in). It's a whole ecosystem in which a multitude of languages exist and the only thing they really need to have in common is that on some level they speak Racket. Personally, I think the above paragraph explains how exciting Racket as a language and platform is, but it doesn't sound that interesting on the surface. It does allow people to create things like this[0] and this[1], though, which displays real practical use; shaping the way you solve the problem to fit the actual problem. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmqbnhHp1c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmqbnhHp1c - Naughty Dog's scripting language [1] http://pollenpub.com/ http://pollenpub.com/ - A web book publishing language

speeder 12y ago

Not really secret, there is even an article about how to try to make Functional C++ that he wrote.

AceJohnny2 12y ago

> on his iPad (which is nicely suited to editing S-expressions) How so? I'm curious.

projectileboy 12y ago
There's a fun iPad app called Lisping that let's you play with different flavors of Lisp. Not really a programming environment, but it's sort of neat for trying out ideas.
- chadzawistowski 12y ago
  How does that get around the iOS App store restriction on interpreted code?
  - rsynnott 12y ago
    I assume they got around that restriction by cunningly releasing it after that restriction was abandoned in 2010...
    - chadzawistowski 12y ago
      Ah, my inexperience with Apple's platforms is showing.
  - AceJohnny2 12y ago
    Is that still a thing? I thought they relented?
  - edvinbesic 12y ago
    I belive that restriction was lifted quite a while ago, like in 2010 or something. It didn't last long as game engines required the use of scripting languages for game logic, among other things. Apple simply had to cave in.
    - paines 12y ago