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Racket v7.2

blog.racket-lang.org

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Re: Racket v7.2

#51

Post by webwanderings »

IngoBlechschmid wrote: post #3

Mike Sperber used Racket in his excellent 35c3 talk "How to teach programming to your loved ones": https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9800-how_to_teach_programming_to... From the abstract: "A word of warning: The resulting approach is radically different from most teaching approaches used in universities and schools. In particular, it avoids teaching purely through examples and expecting students to develop the skills to ar…

Thanks for sharing. Nice. I'm not a programmer but I have taken many courses all over the web (I think I only lack practice). This talk reminds me of the Edx course on functional programming using DrRacket. As the talk suggests about the boring and bureaucratic aspect of the recipe design, I think that's exactly the reason why I couldn't finish that Edx course twice, though I am convinced that this design/recipe methodology to learning to program, is the right solution (which is absent from the pedagogy of a lot of courses). This talk makes me want to try and take that edx course again, the third time!

Re: Racket v7.2

#52

Post by bjoli »

velcrovan wrote: post #45
seertaak wrote: post #11

Racket is such a cool project. I keep telling myself I'll find the time to do something serious with it, but I never get around to it. One minor bit of criticism - would be it be so hard/expensive to hire a designer to do some minor touching up of the DrRacket GUI? It looks like a toy, and the icons didn't even look good in 1998. I'll balance this criticism with the remark that any language/platform that manages to a…

> and c) has the audacity (combined, curiously, with humility) to just swap out the entire backend to eek out more performance Unfortunately they are not doing it for performance reasons. They are doing it solely to make the code base cleaner and easier to maintain. Based on their most recent blog on the subject ( https://blog.racket-lang.org/2019/01/racket-on-chez-status.h... ), the new backend is almost uniformly s…

I think the smaller example Matthew Flatt used in a talk about the expander is a better example. From the old expander's conception (many many years ago) only 2 people commited any changes and one of those only committed smaller instrumentation changes.

Since the rewrite (that was about 1.5 to 2x slower) less than a year ago 6 people had made commits.

What one could hope for would be some chez scheme interoperability for the really speed demanding parts.

Re: Racket v7.2

#53

Post by mark_l_watson »

seertaak wrote: post #11

Racket is such a cool project. I keep telling myself I'll find the time to do something serious with it, but I never get around to it. One minor bit of criticism - would be it be so hard/expensive to hire a designer to do some minor touching up of the DrRacket GUI? It looks like a toy, and the icons didn't even look good in 1998. I'll balance this criticism with the remark that any language/platform that manages to a…

You might want to also try VSCIDE and Emacs - decide what works for you.

Re: Racket v7.2

#54

Post by klibertp »

chriswarbo wrote: post #50
klibertp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thing is to get rid of the syntax feeling unfamiliar. As a beginner, you need 3-4 chapters of a book for this. As an experienced dev, what you need is an overview, a cheatsheet, and reference docs. I think you can get an overview from the Wikipedia on S-expressions[1], then there's Dylan cheatsheet[2] which translates Scheme syntax into equivalent forms in a language with more "normal" (infix) syntax, which als…

Regarding s-expressions, there are some perfectly reasonable alternatives ( http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2017-08-29-s_expressions.html ) For example: https://docs.racket-lang.org/sweet/index.html https://www.draketo.de/proj/wisp/ Although I prefer to embrace the s-expressions :)

Yeah, but that's not Racket (technically, the first one is, but it overrides the reader; the second is a Python-based transpiler of some syntax into S-exps) - it won't help someone new to the language, if only because it adds yet another dependency and mental conversion to keep in mind when reading examples and such. They're there if you want them, though.

Re: Racket v7.2

#55

Post by mark_l_watson »

sigstoat wrote: post #31
dTal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I test drove Racket-on-Chez the other day by attempting to use the pict3d module (since 3d is an application that needs speed). My experience was as follows: 1) Install pict3d through DrRacket's built-in package manager - sudden, silent crash. Luckily I ran it from a terminal, which indicates an out of memory error. 2) Raise DrRacket's memory limit to "unlimited" and retry. Same result. 3) Google how to install packa…

> It's probably pict3d's fault, but there's no indication of this module being of "pre-alpha" stability. Or maybe it's an interaction with Racket-on-chez and C library interfacing. Racket-on-Chez is what's pre-alpha. I don't think there's been requests for anyone to test it unless they were going to dig into the guts and try to fix things. > since 3d is an application that needs speed if the slowest part of your 3D i…

Correct, it is early code.

Racket on Chez runs my code so I switched over but for most people it might be better to wait.

Re: Racket v7.2

#56

Post by WoodenChair »

webwanderings wrote: post #51
IngoBlechschmid wrote: post #3

Mike Sperber used Racket in his excellent 35c3 talk "How to teach programming to your loved ones": https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9800-how_to_teach_programming_to... From the abstract: "A word of warning: The resulting approach is radically different from most teaching approaches used in universities and schools. In particular, it avoids teaching purely through examples and expecting students to develop the skills to ar…

Thanks for sharing. Nice. I'm not a programmer but I have taken many courses all over the web (I think I only lack practice). This talk reminds me of the Edx course on functional programming using DrRacket. As the talk suggests about the boring and bureaucratic aspect of the recipe design, I think that's exactly the reason why I couldn't finish that Edx course twice, though I am convinced that this design/recipe meth…

If a methodology doesn't motivate you to actually do the work (i.e. finish the course) no matter how intuitive it might be, it will not work. That said of course everyone is different, and what motivates one person, may not motivate another.

Re: Racket v7.2

#57

Post by BMarkmann »

klibertp wrote: post #47
BMarkmann wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the most common answer to this might be SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs -- you'll find course videos pretty easily from Google; the ones from the authors are really great). Note that it's based on Scheme, which is a ancestor of Racket, but Racket has a language pack that papers over the differences and works with the code from the book. Official course website: https://mitpress.mit.…

> Seems like the most common answer to this might be SICP Please don't. SICP is beautiful and all, but it's neither an intro nor practical/immediately useful. There's a lot of enlightenments to be had by reading it, but they have very little to do with Racket specifically. IMO, it's a bad book if your purpose is learning Racket. > You might, as a novice coming to Racket , find "Realm of Racket" to be more approachabl…

Please don't what, have an opinion?

I read SICP as an experienced programmer and I didn't find it impractical at all; in fact, it kickstarted my interest in other lisps.

I read Realm of Racket as an experienced programmer (after knowing Common Lisp and Clojure well) and it was entertaining and, yes, a gradual introduction to Racket.

I'm sorry if you disagree, but was answering the question that was given with a couple thoughts that might be beneficial. I'm glad you feel confident enough in your interpretation of what was being asked and the OP's personal background and motivation to flame someone else without, I don't know, answering the question.

EDIT: I see you did answer him below, but my general response is still valid.

EDIT 2: Your response makes more sense given context. Sorry I got internet angry a little too quickly.

Re: Racket v7.2

#58

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

ssivark wrote: post #49
kumarvvr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I am an experienced developer but new to Lisp based stuff, which seems to be what racket is based on. Can you suggest any books to learn racket. edit: Spelling

Check out "How to design programs" (the second edition is said to contain significant improvements). Book is available for free online. It's discussed once every while on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=htdp

Link to the book directly is: https://htdp.org

Re: Racket v7.2

#60

Post by klibertp »

BMarkmann wrote: post #57
klibertp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like the most common answer to this might be SICP Please don't. SICP is beautiful and all, but it's neither an intro nor practical/immediately useful. There's a lot of enlightenments to be had by reading it, but they have very little to do with Racket specifically. IMO, it's a bad book if your purpose is learning Racket. > You might, as a novice coming to Racket , find "Realm of Racket" to be more approachabl…

Please don't what, have an opinion? I read SICP as an experienced programmer and I didn't find it impractical at all; in fact, it kickstarted my interest in other lisps. I read Realm of Racket as an experienced programmer (after knowing Common Lisp and Clojure well) and it was entertaining and, yes, a gradual introduction to Racket. I'm sorry if you disagree, but was answering the question that was given with a coupl…

My "please don't" was directed at the potential learner as in "please don't use this particular book if all you want is learning Racket" - not at you, in any way.

Also, I said it's a bad book for learning Racket In My Opinion. Of course it's all based on opinions and I just presented my own. No flame intended, at all.

EDIT: sure, no problem :)

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