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Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

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Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

#22

Post by m0nastic »

samth wrote: post #20
m0nastic wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't (although that admittedly is one of the best benefits of Clojure). Also, that's not a listing of the total number of libraries; it's ranked based on the number of useful ones (where "useful" is a completely subjective term that relates to how often I've looked to see if a library exists that does what I want). Racket actually has more overall libraries than you'd expect considering its popularity, but I've f…

> Racket actually has more overall libraries than you'd expect considering its popularity, but I've found that many of them are old, no longer updated, scheme libraries (from the days before Racket rebranded from Dr. Scheme). That certainly doesn't make them useless, but I'm reticent to mix scheme-style code into my project. Which libraries are you referring to? Libraries distributed with Racket, or libraries on Plan…

Sorry, I should have been more specific; but I was referring to the libraries available on Planet.

It looks like the new Planet that you guys just shipped doesn't have all the legacy mzscheme packages that used to seem to be the majority of packages. I don't know if that was intentional, but if not, I think that it's a nice tangential benefit.

I just remember every time I'd search for something on Planet, most of the results I'd get back were for old scheme libraries.

I know it's annoying as a developer to hear a vague criticism like "there's less useful libraries" without being able to provide a list of concrete items; but I'm going to annoy you by not being able to come up with anything specific right now. Sorry ;)

I will say though, I think Marketplace looks really neat, and I'm looking forward to testing it out for some things internally.

Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

#23

Post by samth »

m0nastic wrote: post #22
samth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Racket actually has more overall libraries than you'd expect considering its popularity, but I've found that many of them are old, no longer updated, scheme libraries (from the days before Racket rebranded from Dr. Scheme). That certainly doesn't make them useless, but I'm reticent to mix scheme-style code into my project. Which libraries are you referring to? Libraries distributed with Racket, or libraries on Plan…

Sorry, I should have been more specific; but I was referring to the libraries available on Planet. It looks like the new Planet that you guys just shipped doesn't have all the legacy mzscheme packages that used to seem to be the majority of packages. I don't know if that was intentional, but if not, I think that it's a nice tangential benefit. I just remember every time I'd search for something on Planet, most of the…

Ok, that makes sense. There are indeed lots of old bit-rotted libraries on planet, and not as much guidance as would be nice on how to pick good ones.

If you do come up with something specific, just holler.

I'm glad you're excited about Marketplace -- Tony's done some really great stuff with that.

Finally, if you're able to share more privately about what your company is doing with Racket, I know we'd be quite interested.

Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

#25

Post by groovy2shoes »

gexla wrote: post #24

Is Racket good for learning Lisp/Scheme or is it better to start with something else?

I learned with Racket, and I found it to be a great experience. It comes with an IDE, DrRacket, that makes it very comfortable to start experimenting. It's also "batteries-included", with libraries for GUI, graphics, networking, etc. It also comes with really good documentation (at least as good as Python's, I'd say, and better than either Perl's or Ruby's).

Racket has a good foothold in educational environments, so it's no coincidence that it's conducive to learning. However, Racket also sees a lot of usage in the PL research space, so it's also conducive to just experimenting. Those two combined can make it a very fun environment.

There's also #racket on freenode, which I've found rather welcoming.

Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

#27

Post by 616c »

whyme wrote: post #21
Oculus wrote: post #2

Racket is my first functional language and its been fun, but is it more of an educational language or is it used in production?

HN is built using arc which is really just an abstraction layer built with racket (previously mzscheme).

Yes, and I am not sure if this was addressing my comment. I believe the Arc implementation here (despite being a language built with Racket) is run with its own implementation of continuations.

I mentioned people complaining because, well, people complain when you get timeouts with your continuation. That is why when you click More at the bottom of the page, you see a URL that looks like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=N5yDJXCzVXXV8kqTp57A7D

I believe this is calling into the continuation space. I could be wrong, however. I am just starting my Scheme journey.

Nonetheless, sometimes continuations do not work well on HN and I see people mention that. It is different way to handle state (Racket calls their Racket server stateless for this reason). I just wanted to point that, even if people will pass judgement from their experience here, it is a cool concept nonetheless.

Also, more experienced people should correct my analysis of HN if I am wrong.

Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

#28

Post by 616c »

samth wrote: post #23
m0nastic wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I should have been more specific; but I was referring to the libraries available on Planet. It looks like the new Planet that you guys just shipped doesn't have all the legacy mzscheme packages that used to seem to be the majority of packages. I don't know if that was intentional, but if not, I think that it's a nice tangential benefit. I just remember every time I'd search for something on Planet, most of the…

Ok, that makes sense. There are indeed lots of old bit-rotted libraries on planet, and not as much guidance as would be nice on how to pick good ones. If you do come up with something specific, just holler. I'm glad you're excited about Marketplace -- Tony's done some really great stuff with that. Finally, if you're able to share more privately about what your company is doing with Racket, I know we'd be quite intere…

I am also very interested in Marketplace. I am just starting, but when I saw it I thought Erlang/OTP-ish concurrency and network stuff on Racket? Yes please!

Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

#29

Post by biscarch »

m0nastic wrote: post #17
oskarth wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come you are using all three of those languages in production rather than just one of them?

I'm using different languages for different parts of the system. While I could probably do everything in one language, I'm not sold on the idea that that's actually a good idea (aside from developer convenience, which considering I'm the only developer I don't rate very highly). I also don't feel qualified enough as a language person to really hold defensible opinions about their relative strengths and weaknesses yet…

If you want to try out Haskell for web development again one day ping me (email in profile) and I'll send you a copy of Snap for Beginners[1]. I'm releasing it at the end of the week and it should make getting started in web dev with Haskell easier.

[1] http://snapforbeginners.com/

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