Having used clojure for a few things recently, I am interested in picking up a non-jvm lisp. It seems like Racket and Chicken Scheme are both well recommended. Anyone reading this have experience with both / insights as to why I might want to select one vs the other?
Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
61–70 of 78 posts
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#62I'm using Racket for a major project right now. It's been hit and miss. On the one hand, Racket is by far the best alternative/non-mainstream language—the docs are good, there are surprisingly broad libraries, and of course it's great to support the good people at Northeastern. On the other hand, there is evidence here and there that this language isn't commonly used in production. For example, the pattern-matcher is…
What do you mean by "use it programmatically" for pattern matching? Can you give an example of a language that has this feature?
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#63I 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 disagree with your examples. Taste is an odd thing that way.
Specifically, previous/next are great if you are reading it straight through. I agree this isn't that likely, but is nice to have. (I have actually used these. Recently, even.)
The fonts and colors are mostly pleasant. I can see how you would like other schemes. But I can't find anything atrocious.
I love how linked everything is. Specifically in the code samples. Even in the intro[1], all code samples are linked to the docs for what is there. Contrast this with the flask documentation, where if I want to see what @app.route does, I have to go find it elsewhere.
So, yes. There are things I would find to complain about if asked to look for them. At no point in actually perusing and using the site have these ever bothered me. And there are more niceties thrown in there that have made things easier than any of the complaints you mentioned.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Felleisen's How to Design Programs has an entirety different set of goals than SICP. HtDP teaches programming practices. SICP teaches 'computer science.' HtDP is a great book, but no substitute for SICP in terms of content.
While I haven't read HtDP, I've read similar things. I'm in my late 20s going for a second BS (this time in comp sci), and wanted to go through SICP on my own (plus the online lectures). I felt that I needed a bit of a warmup, though, and chose 'Concrete Abstractions' instead of HtDP. I'm satisfied with it so far.
It may seem obvious but HtDP emphasizes designing programs. It's not really trying to teach theories of computer science or abstractions. It's about developing coding habits - in terms of SICP it's all about good wishful thinking.
SICP, and this is not a criticism, is more like a stamp collection of computer science topics. It provides a point of reference when I've read about operating systems, state machines, compilers, data structures, etc. etc.
Between the two, SICP is flat out a better book qua book. On the other hand, working through just a little of HtDP will probably have more impact on the way you write software than working through a little of SICP.
Lastly, while there may be some similarities to other introductory texts, I doubt that there is any computing pedagogy backed by as much research as Felleisen and the PLT group. While SICP and Scheme were intended to facilitate teaching, the Racket ecosystem [and PLT Scheme before it] are continuously developed with pedagogy as a primary driver.
Most pedagogy is driven by "I think this would be a better way to teach programming." The PLT group checks their theories statistically and their theories are tied to educational theories in general. And they've been going down that road for several decades.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#65Is Racket good for learning Lisp/Scheme or is it better to start with something else?
Absolutely. However, if you want to learn modern concepts and/or their implementation in a lisp, I would say Clojure is a better bet.
I don't really agree with that. Although Clojure has many great things, for example its out-of-box immutable data structures, I wouldn't say that it's "more modern" than Racket.
If anything, lately Clojure has been drawing on Racket for inspiration in many areas (for example Typed Racket).
In fact, if you wanted to find a criticism of Racket, it might be that occasionally it is "too" modern -- in the sense that some parts are implementations of research papers. You might encounter the occasional module whose documentation isn't much more than "Implements foobars in the sense of Researcher [Year] ". To be clear, that is not 98% of Racket. I mention it just to counter the idea that Racket is "less modern". It's constantly evolving with new things.
Finally, for someone getting started with a lisp, Racket is (a) download, (b) install, (c) start coding and running -- within literally 5 minutes. (Of course experienced people aren't limited to DrRacket if they prefer Emacs or Vim or whatever.)
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#66I 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…
When Racketeers talk about documentation, they're not talking about the sort of documentation that you are holding out as better. They're not talking CSS and markup and formatting. No.
When Racketeers talk about documentation, they are speaking in Lisp and the context is code as data and data as code. When Racketeers talk about documentation they are talking about Scribble.
http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/index.html
Scribble is Racket's documentation tool. It adds an independent documentation phase to the Lisp expansion. Here is Mathew Flatt introducing it:
None of the examples even comes close. The closest thing is EMACS Org.mode, but it is still ad hoc to whatever language one is documenting.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. However, if you want to learn modern concepts and/or their implementation in a lisp, I would say Clojure is a better bet.
I don't really agree with that. Although Clojure has many great things, for example its out-of-box immutable data structures, I wouldn't say that it's "more modern" than Racket. If anything, lately Clojure has been drawing on Racket for inspiration in many areas (for example Typed Racket). In fact, if you wanted to find a criticism of Racket, it might be that occasionally it is "too" modern -- in the sense that some…
The whole notion of a "modern" programming language is a big joke considering that mainstream languages have been playing catch-up to Lisp for decades.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> a network service sigh solving the same problems over and over and over inetd, xinetd, djb's tcpserver, probably others and heck, even systemd have all offered well tested and hardened solutions this this problem. Every generation rewrites Unix badly
Couldn't he just wrap his Haskell executable in inetd?
I don't know whether m0nastic is doing that, but I don't think writing a program in Haskell precludes the use of inetd, etc.
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#69I 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…
When Racketeers talk about documentation, they're not talking about the sort of documentation that you are holding out as better. They're not talking CSS and markup and formatting. No. When Racketeers talk about documentation, they are speaking in Lisp and the context is code as data and data as code. When Racketeers talk about documentation they are talking about Scribble. http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/index.…
My critique was more on the visual side of things. I think it matters. That said, onto your comment:
I liked the presentation. The @ notation is kinda neat and elegant, and no doubt enabled by the ridiculous power macros give you in terms of modifying how everything is parsed. It's cool that it's implemented as a DrScheme lang, and it can run and is all code-is-data-y, and it's not a totally separate language. However, I don't really see anything in here that any modern document processor (say http://sphinx-doc.org/) can't perform.
The second-last question brings up a great point that when you tightly couple your documentation language with the platform (PLT), you run the risk of it being a PITA to use it to document other languages. I think the presenter's solution of automatically creating stub classes and such is really unsatisfactory and kinda kills the benefits.
So there you have it, there are pluses and minuses. I think Scribble is neat, but it's really not all that out of the ordinary.. It's definitely not true that "nothing comes close".
Re: Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Racketeers talk about documentation, they're not talking about the sort of documentation that you are holding out as better. They're not talking CSS and markup and formatting. No. When Racketeers talk about documentation, they are speaking in Lisp and the context is code as data and data as code. When Racketeers talk about documentation they are talking about Scribble. http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/index.…
My critique was more on the visual side of things. I think it matters. That said, onto your comment: I liked the presentation. The @ notation is kinda neat and elegant, and no doubt enabled by the ridiculous power macros give you in terms of modifying how everything is parsed. It's cool that it's implemented as a DrScheme lang, and it can run and is all code-is-data-y, and it's not a totally separate language. Howeve…
Beware the Blub Paradox.