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Racket Compiler and Runtime Status

blog.racket-lang.org

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: Racket Compiler and Runtime Status

#51

I am interested in LISP-type languages, but I have a serious case of decision paralysis. GNU Guile? Common Lisp? Clojure (JVM)? Racket? Judging by my understanding of the difference between Common Lisp and Scheme, I think I am more of a Scheme type (I prefer C over C++, I like Go more than Java, etc).

I'm leaning towards GNU Guile these days, for a few reasons. Mostly because I am a GNU type of person, (almost all of my stack is gpl, for example) and Guile is now not only the preferred GNU extension language, but it is also the core part of GUIX, and a few other tools I really like (mcron, a cron replacement). So to explain just a bit, often I do a lot of paralysis by analysis of tooling, but as a side effect one…

Fedora just announced to kill the Guile bindings for GNU make and GDB.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RemoveGuileFromToolch...

Apparently they dont like it that much

Re: Racket Compiler and Runtime Status

#55
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm leaning towards GNU Guile these days, for a few reasons. Mostly because I am a GNU type of person, (almost all of my stack is gpl, for example) and Guile is now not only the preferred GNU extension language, but it is also the core part of GUIX, and a few other tools I really like (mcron, a cron replacement). So to explain just a bit, often I do a lot of paralysis by analysis of tooling, but as a side effect one…

Fedora just announced to kill the Guile bindings for GNU make and GDB. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RemoveGuileFromToolch... Apparently they dont like it that much

Thats just redhat deciding that for fedora though, GDB itself on other distros will still have support for guile. Not sure how to interpret that, though I guess working on shrinking gdb is understandable.

Re: Racket Compiler and Runtime Status

#56
post #54
post #52

what's a good textbook/tutorial for someone self-teaching Racket to follow along?

When I was learning in university, How to Design Programs was the textbook: https://htdp.org/2020-8-1/Book/index.html

There are 2 edx courses based on the book too for those who prefer video instruction.

[1] https://www.edx.org/course/how-to-code-simple-data

[2] https://www.edx.org/course/how-to-code-complex-data

Re: Racket Compiler and Runtime Status

#57

I'm glad Racket CS happened(even though I don't use Racket), because I was worried about the future of chezscheme's maintenance. It's a runtime with good portability(Guile Scheme, for instance, seems to pretend Windows doesn't exist), and I think it'd be a shame to see it fade away in the future.

[deleted]

Re: Racket Compiler and Runtime Status

#58
post #7
post #5

I used Racket in an intro to CS course a few years ago and was told it’s designed to be a teaching language. Is there any reason to use racket over a more popular functional language? Does anyone use it in production?

The Racket distribution comes with several languages. You were probably using the socalled teaching languages, which are small subsets of real Racket. Using a subset of the real language allows better and more beginner friendly error messages. The real Racket language is a general purpose language with all the bells and whistles you could ever imagine.

Plus some bells and whistles that you can’t! It’s really impressive, and I’ve found Racket’s documentation to be excellent.

Re: Racket Compiler and Runtime Status

#59
post #47
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case just pick the scheme dialect used by SCIP. https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html After getting comfortable with Lisp based languages, it is like Algol derived ones, it is relatively easy to jump between them. I tend to stay with Clojure, because JVM/CLR is where I spend most of my time, so I can easily pig back into the libraries. Maybe what you can do is similarly, pick a Lisp var…

There's pretty much no reason to use MIT Scheme unless for a course, despite its historical significance and influence. For one, it's no longer supported on Windows. I would recommend using Racket with the #sicp language extension. https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/SICP_Language.html

Sure, hence why I didn't mentioned it explicitly, thanks for the addendum.

Re: Racket Compiler and Runtime Status

#60
post #13

I am interested in LISP-type languages, but I have a serious case of decision paralysis. GNU Guile? Common Lisp? Clojure (JVM)? Racket? Judging by my understanding of the difference between Common Lisp and Scheme, I think I am more of a Scheme type (I prefer C over C++, I like Go more than Java, etc).

If you want batteries included and probably the nicest runtime of all the lisps I would suggest racket. I use guile since I think it more fun, but racket is a lot easier if you want libraries around.

Thank you for the feedback! In what way is Guile more fun?
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