Why learn Racket? A student's perspective

Fair point although I feel like Racket deserves credit for the way it builds upon itself. By design it allows you to have the Student Languages that are each iterations upon the previous, and all are valid Racket programs.

As a counter-example you can't do much of anything in Java without introducing class and public-static-void-main-string-args.

> Someday some folks will actually gather evidence that really let's us know if these interesting claims about these languages hold any water. I don't think we've made much progress on that as a community.

Ironic that you should post this, having not done any due diligence on your own part.

Shriram Krishnamurthi, who, incidentally, was one of the original members of the Racket team, is at the forefront of CS education research, and one thing he thinks about is how to introduce people to computer science. This, of course, includes the choice of language. He, as well as his wife and two former students, wrote and recently published the book "A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing" (DCIC) [1], which is meant to be a new kind of CS 101 textbook.

In section 1.8, "Our Programming Language Choice" [2], the authors write about how Python is now a common introductory language choice that also enjoys industry use, but it can lead to frustrations for new students of computing, so they didn't want to use Python. Instead, they developed their own language, Pyret, for teaching. (Pyret is also used in another initiative of Shriram's: Bootstrap [3].) It's worth pointing out that although Pyret is very similar to Python in many regards, its spiritual heritage certainly includes Racket. Racket was designed at the outset as a language for teaching programming, and this desire to invest effort in tools for beginners has stuck with SK for the duration of his decades-spanning career. I'd suggest looking through his publications, blog posts, and Twitter feed for works/notes about CS education with regard to language choice. He's certainly not quiet about it.

All this is to say: people are working on getting to a solid answer about what language is best for introductory material. We just haven't come to a definitive conclusion yet.

However, I think we should leave all that aside and focus on something else: the original blog post for this HN thread is not a "debate", as you've suggested. It's one student's perspective. They are absolutely allowed to think aloud to the internet and share their resulting perspectives. They didn't claim to have all the answers. I think their post was rather well-written, exploring things that this student felt made learning programming easier. If that's not worth discussing, I'm not sure what is.

[1] https://dcic-world.org

[2] https://dcic-world.org/2022-01-25/part_intro.html#%28part._....

[3] https://bootstrapworld.org

It's not really dynamic typing, because it's happening at compile time. Really type providers are just a specific, restricted form of code generation.

I know Shriram very well, he and Kathi do excellent work and as I said they are focused on more valuable projects than trying to prove one language is superior to another for CS1. They are building tools and curricula, and have done some research that sheds some light on the tradeoffs in using certain languages like Racket. Kathi's "Rainfall Accumulates" paper is one of the few papers that gets close to work in the space I am talking about. Shriram's analyses often leave me stunned at just how sharp that guy is, and helps remind me that CS Ed really needs to level up its game.

That said, the HtDP curriculum that they were involved in, and led to Bootstrap and a host of their other projects, was not grounded in any kind of data collection or treated as an empirical research project. Smart people with good intentions built something and threw it into a classroom. Intentionally so, by design [1].

Their subsequent work with Pyret is much better grounded and well-informed, and I've been absolutely fascinated by it. Their data science curriculum delights me, and I have often thought that if I had more time I'd translate it to Python. I think their more recent proposal about a Table Abstract Data Type is just inspired. But we are still VERY far from ever proving things like, "Racket is easier for students to learn". I'm fairly sure it's not even worth doing.

I appreciate the original article was just one student's perspective. It's a perspective I don't entirely disagree with. Nonetheless, they make interesting claims not backed by any kind of published, empirical data. They hypothesize that Racket is virtuous to learn because of how it presents recursion, and because of its simplistic syntax. Cool theory, but not proven using Randomized Controlled Studies. I mean, most things in CS Ed aren't, so I don't think it's a surprising thing to point out. But that doesn't mean we should just sit back and accept these claims.

Personally, I have seen the HtDP curriculum do damage. I have also seen it firsthand do a lot of good. My Racket relationship is complicated [2]. The author makes a great point of the potential value of these models, and also mentions how this whole debate is sort of pointless. I believe that at the end of the day, the CS1 language is simultaneously very important and yet somehow unimportant - it's all just the psychology of the people involved. That, too, is an unsubstantiated claim.

But please, tell me more about how I have not done my due diligence. Would you like to cite some actual RCT papers that back up the claims founding all this stuff? Or do you want to keep citing textbooks like that somehow proves something?

[1] https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Measuring_education.... [2] https://github.com/acbart/myracketrelationshipiscomplicated....

I think it's a good choice if you're majoring in CS, or anything closely related where you are very likely to learn another general-purpose language anyway (or have done so), then it's an awesome way to see different paradigms.

I think it's a bad choice if this is your only programming course during your studies, then it would be much more helpful to learn something that is a safer bet you'll be using in your life continuing forward. Yes, even JavaScript. If you're interested, you'll pick up another language and apply what you learned here - but if not, then I think there's a better chance you'll recall what you learned with the mainstream model and work from there.

This is my unscientific opinion, but it's based on all my experience with non-programmers where you can be happy if they learned _something_ at all, they'll most often see themselves as "I learned some Python" for example, and are willing to expand from there, but they're more reluctant to transfer the knowledge to learn a new language. I don't think it's completely off, either, even drawing a parallel to learning natural languages (to a small degree, not full working proficiency).