This language just keeps getting better and better. I am so glad I bought the Realm of Racket book. Cannot wait to get my Scheme on! And with ARM this will soon become the only language I need!
Yes, I really love racket. Congratulations to the team!
Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
41–50 of 78 posts
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#42Racket is my first functional language and its been fun, but is it more of an educational language or is it used in production?
Yandex's PaaS "cocaine" also supports Racket
Interesting. But looks like a software[1] and not a service[2]. Do Yandex plans to launch a public service on Cocaine?
[1] - https://github.com/cocaine/ [2] - http://api.yandex.ru/cocaine/
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#43Earlier 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…
This is definitely one of the main advantages of being the only developer.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#44Is Racket good for learning Lisp/Scheme or is it better to start with something else?
If you are interested in learning a LISP, then Racket makes a lot of sense. It is actively being developed and extended and because of its roots in academia extensions tend to be address interesting problems- many arise out of computer science research by professors and grad students. On the other hand, if you want to learn Scheme by working through SICP, then I would recommend MIT Scheme to avoid impedance. There's…
It has admittedly been several years, but I distinctly remember MIT Scheme being an utter pain in the ass to get built. I'd recommend Racket for people just getting off the ground for that reason alone.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#45Is Racket good for learning Lisp/Scheme or is it better to start with something else?
All the major lisp dialects are rather different and encourage different styles. My own opinion is that no one is a better first lisp, as long as you check out the others eventually. Racket is an excellent start. I always advise people interested in lisp to check out racket, clojure and Common Lisp in whatever order they wish. I started with scheme in 2008, moved to clojure in 2009 and I've been a happy Common lisper since 2010/11. Depending on your own style as a programmer you might choose a different main dialect you like best, but only after you try them all :)
Happy Lisping!
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried SLIME? I'm wondering why you put DrRacket above SLIME.
Is SLIME any better than Geiser? I've been using it with Racket and it's pretty good. http://www.nongnu.org/geiser/
Geiser is great, but SLIME is much better mostly because Common Lisp was designed with interactive programming in mind(the condition system, the object system, dynamic variables ect. are all features that help with interactive programming). You get an almost smalltaskesque feeling with slime.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#47I like that the docs look less like they jumped out of the geocities era. Still could go a long way though. Signalling is important, and if you signal "old and unupdated" to your users, that's not a great start. (e.g.: http://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/Package_Concepts.html)
"prev", "next" (when the table of content is right there next to it) and "top" (usually the header / logo link these days) and collapsible TOC trees screams "we copied this out of MSDN '97 and windows .chm files".
The "...search files..." looks like it was written by a programmer. The white on gray line with the black on white line next to it looks odd. Natural spacing sometimes is a great substitute for lines.
The main docs page (http://docs.racket-lang.org/) contains way too many fonts and way too many colors. Pick a scheme and go with it.
My favourite examples of docs that look like people cared:
http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/quickstart/ (well designed, tasteful font, color and spacing selection)
http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/getting-started/index.html (lack of search bugs me)
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:nth-child ("hide sidebar" here serves a real purpose: hides the whole thing so the doc display is wider, kinda nice that TOC follows you)
Conclusion: Glad it's improving, but please keep at it! Great docs make your product a joy to use!
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edit: let me add some WORSE examples to put things into perspective:
https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.6/TdbcCmd/tdbc.htm
http://junit.sourceforge.net/javadoc/ (ughhhh)
http://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/manual/ (whenever I see the gendocs selection page I get nostalgic. Really? 120 vs 420kb? I didn't care even when I was using dialup. Also the "one webpage per node" version almost always sucks because you can't search for anything. And the "all in one page" version sucks because it's too huge sometimes. Who uses the ascii text version or the info docs version?)
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are interested in learning a LISP, then Racket makes a lot of sense. It is actively being developed and extended and because of its roots in academia extensions tend to be address interesting problems- many arise out of computer science research by professors and grad students. On the other hand, if you want to learn Scheme by working through SICP, then I would recommend MIT Scheme to avoid impedance. There's…
It has admittedly been several years, but I distinctly remember MIT Scheme being an utter pain in the ass to get built. I'd recommend Racket for people just getting off the ground for that reason alone.
GNU does provide binaries for some systems: http://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/
However, there hasn't been a release since 2011. The primary maintainer (Chris Hanson) is now at Google, and seems to be busy with other things. Previously, he was at MIT and used to write most of his own research projects in Scheme, so it got a lot more maintenance attention.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#49I like that the docs look less like they jumped out of the geocities era. Still could go a long way though. Signalling is important, and if you signal "old and unupdated" to your users, that's not a great start. (e.g.: http://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/Package_Concepts.html ) "prev", "next" (when the table of content is right there next to it) and "top" (usually the header / logo link these days) and collapsible TOC tr…
I think you have a valid point (other than in the case of the Vagrant docs, which I absolutely detest [0]).
The simplest way to make good-looking docs might just be to 'just use Sphinx' (as does Flask, mentioned and http://docs.python.org/ and [many others][1].
Another example of amazing docs (they've always been pretty decent, but amazing in their most recent style) are the PHP docs: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.pg-affected-rows.php
The docs are a necessity to make up for the shoddy, inconsistent patchwork that is their language design, but they are damned well designed and easy-to-use for the wading through flat scope that is required by those who use the language.
Similarly, styles based on YARD/codo (http://coffeedoc.info/github/coffeedoc/codo/master/) are pretty nice for API references.
[0]: Disappearing sidebar when you resize to narrow, huge amounts of spacing everywhere and sidebar names that can't be expanded without navigating to their root. :/
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#50I like that the docs look less like they jumped out of the geocities era. Still could go a long way though. Signalling is important, and if you signal "old and unupdated" to your users, that's not a great start. (e.g.: http://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/Package_Concepts.html ) "prev", "next" (when the table of content is right there next to it) and "top" (usually the header / logo link these days) and collapsible TOC tr…
I think you have a valid point (other than in the case of the Vagrant docs, which I absolutely detest [0]). The simplest way to make good-looking docs might just be to 'just use Sphinx' (as does Flask, mentioned and http://docs.python.org/ and [many others][1]. Another example of amazing docs (they've always been pretty decent, but amazing in their most recent style) are the PHP docs: http://www.php.net/manual/en/fun…
Ooooh the PHP ones are even better than they used to be, I hadn't checked in a while. I have always loved the user comments in docs idea. I've noticed so many bugs, gotchas and idiomatic patterns simply by looking at those comments. I bet it gives the devs a good idea on what to work on next, too. It didn't used to have votes which was bad because it perpetuated bad advice sometimes, but now it seems they have that too!