Any good article recommendations that explain the reasoning to the switch to Chez Scheme as a platform for Racket?
Racket: Lisp for Learning
91–100 of 154 posts
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I heard that even his wife didn't want him to teach their son Racket and wanted him to learn Java. Not sure if true.
I believe you're referring to this thread. https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/racket-users/y...
That's the one, thanks!
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
But where will the culture of Racket go? How will the educational texts, documentation, and general conversations go?
Why does the same conversation not come up when discussing typed racket? Is the introduction of a static type system really less culture-shaking than surface syntax?
I suppose because that's a niche dialect, an experiment if you will, not the anointed successor.
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#94Racket is a mixed bag for me. I've found a little quirks in the standard library, with simple fixes, but annoying. Stuff like decimal->string (?) producing odd output. (It was a tiny fix on my end, but it's a little subjective, maybe the behavior was intended) Not a big deal, but maybe a little impediment for learners compared to python. The article mentions Scribble, which I use as a static site generator for a a pa…
Can you say more about the issue with number->string (probably that's the function you used)? Also, I think we'd be happy to take patches to improve the Scribble CSS for mobile.
Just looked at my code.
It was "real->decimal-string" It includes the decimal point, even when the "digits" parameter is 0. Minor, but when throwing a tiny page together I probably spent 10% of my time just figuring out where that function lived and that there wasn't some other routine I should be using (though it sounds like there actually is). So I changed the format string to "~a~a~a~a" from "~a~a.~a" and did (if (zero? digits) "" "."). Potentially the existing behavior is correct for scheme compatibility?
I'm not web guy, my changes are pretty haphazard, but I'm not the first person to notice this. https://github.com/racket/scribble/pull/62 is a rejected pull request (with you as a reviewer, so I'm sure you know that it doesn't work well currently, on my iPhone SE at least, maybe larger form factor phones do better)
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#95Racket is a mixed bag for me. I've found a little quirks in the standard library, with simple fixes, but annoying. Stuff like decimal->string (?) producing odd output. (It was a tiny fix on my end, but it's a little subjective, maybe the behavior was intended) Not a big deal, but maybe a little impediment for learners compared to python. The article mentions Scribble, which I use as a static site generator for a a pa…
DrRacket seems to suffer a lot from re-implementing typical GUI components. Scrolling a text pane is slow (unless there's a very small amount of text in it), clicking buttons sometimes produces no visual acknowledgement, the "close window" hotkey does not work on some windows (e.g., Preferences), etc. The most entertaining example I've seen was a few years ago when some users with Retina MacBooks were confused as to…
I just loaded it to check something, and it is slow to load and scroll, but other things are not too bad. It's written in racket, right? It could be worse, I'd compare favorably it to a java swing GUI 10 years ago, and it looks native on windows. Probably better behaving than electron UIs, to beat a dead horse.
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#96Carmack is a huge fan of Racket. He was going to use it as the scripting language for VR until the Oculus execs made him use JavaScript instead (boooooo) https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/807797812700348416
Any evidence about any oculus exec (CEO? CFO? GTO?) trying to change the most famous CTO of the company switch an implementation detail. (The comment about the wife spoiling him to use java seemed more credible)
Proof might be this twitter thread, exec could have been implied, because who else can boss the CTO around?
https://mobile.twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/807797812700...
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#97Any good article recommendations that explain the reasoning to the switch to Chez Scheme as a platform for Racket?
https://blog.racket-lang.org/2019/01/racket-on-chez-status.h... and the links at the top should provide the explanation. This paper: https://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/publications/icfp19-rddkmstz.pdf has more details.
Basically, Chez is a now-open-source runtime that's very close to what Racket needs, while also being written mostly in Scheme instead of in C (as the original Racket runtime & compiler is). Building on Chez allows us to cut the amount of C by a factor of ~10 while getting a better architecture.
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently we've had very different experiences. - Yes, there are some quirks in the standard library, but overall most of it seems very well designed. Having spent a bunch of time in Python, which also has a standard library with I'd argue even more quirks. But most Racket libraries seem very carefully thought out IME; I'm not sure that something this old can not have some weird oddities though. - We used DrRacket t…
What kind of machine do you have where DrRacket functions at an appropriate speed? Does it run better on Windows, maybe? It's noticeably laggy on my desktop with 5GB RAM free, a fast quad-core processor, and a fast SSD. I like the design and the ideas it has for teaching, but I can't imagine it being usable performance-wise on the kind of machines that schools usually purchase.
Turning off „background code expansion“ in the settings helps alot
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#99Well, I'm pretty sure this is going to go badly for me in the end, but I might as well leave this here: https://ihateracket.com
Two quick points on the other side: * Industry is moving towards FP. Teaching Python or Java is teaching students a way of programming that will increasingly be out of date * In my day to day programming (Scala) I lean very heavily on the concepts in the design recipes. Understand them and you can create correct code very quickly. No data here. Just something to think about.
> Industry is moving towards FP.
... Citation required. My dad will be writing COBOL till the day he dies, and most of those lines of business logic in Java will bit rot before they get converted to Scala/Haskell/Something else.
I thought you were going to make the more palatable argument that most modern languages refuse to stick to one paradigm. The fact that Java has lambdas now demonstrates the appeal of these other approaches.
Saying that imperative programming will go out of date... Well, that's a bold claim. I vote we meet up in 20 years and whoever is wrong has to buy the other one a beer :)
Re: Racket: Lisp for Learning
#100Well, I'm pretty sure this is going to go badly for me in the end, but I might as well leave this here: https://ihateracket.com
If I understand correctly, you're making scholarly CS Education arguments relative to PbD and HtDP, correct? Like, before you, the professors behind HtDP did relative to SICP (though they chose a playful academic article title, rather than a domain name :)? On that, I'll to defer to you CSE people, to investigate and debate, in the onward progress of science. You're not, however, objecting to Racket itself, the pract…
You are correct! I considered whether I needed to make this distinction more clearly. I'm strictly talking about this approach (language and/or curriculum) being used in CS1. I actually have a lot of love for Racket itself - composing functions and passing selectors to higher order functions to make games and a Kitten Slideshow app still feels so cool even now.
As I brought up in the post, the domain was from a joking argument with my colleague. He started it when he bought ihatepython.com. The fact that he hasn't fleshed it out is a disappointment to us all :)