The Racket Manifesto • Hacker News Board

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#11

Post by shriramkmurthi » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:25 PM UTC

klibertp wrote: post #4

616c wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on that note, be sure to take a look at Pyret, another programming language designed by this group, to address some of these student-oriented programming issues. https://github.com/brownplt/pyret-lang/ It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. I am not the first one here to mention it but it is very cool.

> It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. Wow, I didn't know this. I thought it's another "compiler frontend" for Racket - essentially just a parens-free syntax for people allergic to Lisps. Instead it's a standalone language with self-hosted compiler and JS based runtime, which is even more impressive. The features of Pyret make it the most advanced compile-to-JS l…

We have long-term plans for integrating some kind of rewriting system. Justin Pombrio is doing really interesting work in this direction (e.g., http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/pk-res...). We are rethinking what it means to be “hygienic”, so it'll be a while, probably. But it's a thing we're taking very seriously.

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#12

Post by outworlder » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:30 PM UTC

michaelsbradley wrote: post #2

The book How to Design Programs [1], with its "student languages", is an excellent example of how languages created with Racket can be used to achieve specific goals (or solve specific problems). In the book's case, the goal is to provide a programming environment for explaining and exploring a successively refined software design recipe. Also, the Manifesto and Racket's documentation (and HtDP) are written in Scribb…

There's also Pollen:

http://pkg-build.racket-lang.org/doc/pollen/

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#13

Post by shriramkmurthi » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:32 PM UTC

klibertp wrote: post #4

616c wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on that note, be sure to take a look at Pyret, another programming language designed by this group, to address some of these student-oriented programming issues. https://github.com/brownplt/pyret-lang/ It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. I am not the first one here to mention it but it is very cool.

> It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. Wow, I didn't know this. I thought it's another "compiler frontend" for Racket - essentially just a parens-free syntax for people allergic to Lisps. Instead it's a standalone language with self-hosted compiler and JS based runtime, which is even more impressive. The features of Pyret make it the most advanced compile-to-JS l…

First time I'm seeing Cobra. Of course, there's a 100 altjs languages out there. It's certainly cute. But every Cobra file seems to begin with "class". I have no idea why I'd want to subject a poor child to that nonsense.

Just to be clear, the flip side of Racket's 20 years of work is it is _very sophisticated_. Pyret has nowhere near the same sophistication.

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#14

Post by 616c » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:33 PM UTC

jpolitz wrote: post #8

klibertp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. Wow, I didn't know this. I thought it's another "compiler frontend" for Racket - essentially just a parens-free syntax for people allergic to Lisps. Instead it's a standalone language with self-hosted compiler and JS based runtime, which is even more impressive. The features of Pyret make it the most advanced compile-to-JS l…

(I'm a Pyret core designer/developer.) Pyret started its life as a #lang, which was delightful as a prototyping tool. The demands of running with reasonable performance in a browser led us to switch to a direct-to-JS approach, and we haven't looked back since. The original Pyret-to-JS compiler has been up and running for around a year now; we're still learning how to improve and tune its performance, but it's proven…

Thanks for your work in the Racket world. Thanks for Pyret too, I just do not use it ... yet. I check out your site often enough bc your work comes up a lot here.

I am curious how are you typically advising (Brown?) students to use this. I have a work computer, Windows 7, and 8GB of RAM with SSD disk and running Firefox 38.02a Developer Edition. After disabling NoScript, it took somewhere 2-3 mintues to run. This is an improvement over my last attempt, which crashed my browser a few months back, and I did not try it sense. Is this normal? Did kids have trouble loading it up in class on less powerful commodity machines, or is there something messed up with my laptop in particular?

It is super impressive you have a whole PL toolchain in browser, but does this not actually cause a barrier for your kids? I know I am a FOSS/terminal/off-the-net type and an outlier, but not having offline access would be a bummber to me.

Granted, I will evenutally get around to attempting to compiling the different compiler phases on my personal laptop, bc I do not want to do Node on Windows right now. Haha.

Still, I wish tools like this were around when I had to learn in C++ in uni, as running g++ on a Solaris box helped me along in my eventual love of Unix environments, but really distracted me with a focus on tools and less on theory and real experimentation with languages. Somewhere in between was later use of Python and REPLs. I can see why hardcore instructors like yourselves argue for Schemes, because the early focus on interactive REPLs does indulge a certain curiosity and playfulness that would have really helped me consider CS earlier in life. Again, I am not sure if inverting the order (start with theory, then focus on tools) would have made a difference in the end, but you NEU and Brown Racket guys have shown some real intensive work on CS and PL pedagogy. Thanks for your work. I browse your books often and I hope your passion continues to rub off on me. :-)

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#15

Post by brudgers » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

klibertp wrote: post #4

616c wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on that note, be sure to take a look at Pyret, another programming language designed by this group, to address some of these student-oriented programming issues. https://github.com/brownplt/pyret-lang/ It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. I am not the first one here to mention it but it is very cool.

> It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. Wow, I didn't know this. I thought it's another "compiler frontend" for Racket - essentially just a parens-free syntax for people allergic to Lisps. Instead it's a standalone language with self-hosted compiler and JS based runtime, which is even more impressive. The features of Pyret make it the most advanced compile-to-JS l…

The features of Pyret make it the most advanced compile-to-JS language I know of.

ClojureScript is pretty sophisticated since it is considered production ready for commercial work and leverages much of Clojure's ongoing library development directly.

https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/wiki

Not to take anything away from Pyret.

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#16

Post by shriramkmurthi » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:36 PM UTC

616c wrote: post #6

klibertp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. Wow, I didn't know this. I thought it's another "compiler frontend" for Racket - essentially just a parens-free syntax for people allergic to Lisps. Instead it's a standalone language with self-hosted compiler and JS based runtime, which is even more impressive. The features of Pyret make it the most advanced compile-to-JS l…

> Wow, I didn't know this. I thought it's another "compiler frontend" for Racket - essentially just a parens-free syntax for people allergic to Lisps. Instead it's a standalone language with self-hosted compiler and JS based runtime, which is even more impressive. You know, I was really surprised too. I had just assumed it was another language compiled out with a Racket compiler like Arc or a specialized subset learn…

Thanks! Why don't you get on the announcement list (http://www.pyret.org/discuss/) so you'll find out when the CLI is ready.

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#17

Post by brudgers » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

A great podcast interview with Mathew Flatt, one of the core members of the Racket team.

http://blog.cognitect.com/cognicast/061-matthew-flatt

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#18

Post by shriramkmurthi » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #12

michaelsbradley wrote: post #2

The book How to Design Programs [1], with its "student languages", is an excellent example of how languages created with Racket can be used to achieve specific goals (or solve specific problems). In the book's case, the goal is to provide a programming environment for explaining and exploring a successively refined software design recipe. Also, the Manifesto and Racket's documentation (and HtDP) are written in Scribb…

There's also Pollen: http://pkg-build.racket-lang.org/doc/pollen/

Butterick is _awesome_. Thanks for calling this out!

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#19

Post by shriramkmurthi » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #15

klibertp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is written all in JS (using Node) and can be completely run in a web browser apparently. Wow, I didn't know this. I thought it's another "compiler frontend" for Racket - essentially just a parens-free syntax for people allergic to Lisps. Instead it's a standalone language with self-hosted compiler and JS based runtime, which is even more impressive. The features of Pyret make it the most advanced compile-to-JS l…

The features of Pyret make it the most advanced compile-to-JS language I know of. ClojureScript is pretty sophisticated since it is considered production ready for commercial work and leverages much of Clojure's ongoing library development directly. https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/wiki Not to take anything away from Pyret.

It's awesome in its own way. Our emphasis was on

• allowing arbitrarily deep call stacks (e.g., deep recursion)

• allowing computation to be interrupted

• turning async interfaces into sync ones

This means you can't just compile altjs function calls to JavaScript function calls. That's the work that @jpolitz is referring to. The last we checked, ClojureScript did not address these issues as well (though it does other awesome things!).

Re: The Racket Manifesto

#20

Post by chiddysk » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

I agree with Page 1 alot. You can teach a kid to count in 1s and 0s, but that doesn't necessarily follow that you can teach him to code in machine language. Even the pros' have to use tools like hex representation to make machine language programming easier.