Thanks for this very illuminating message! Speaking as one of the people who's been a core part of Racket since very near the beginning and the main author/designer of DrRacket I found this message very helpful and, indeed, I feel more friendly to you now because of it.
Also, and you may find this amusing given Neil's comments, but Matthew Flatt (the main Racket developer/designer) and I are both co-authors of the R6RS report (I played a more minor role than he did: Jacob Matthews and I just did the semantics at the end; he worked on the standard proper.) Robby On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Elliott Cable <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Neil Van Dyke <[email protected]> wrote: >> Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote at 05/14/2011 03:27 PM: >>> >>> I'd put this a bit differently: >>> >>> Racket will teach you all the things that Scheme would have (i.e., it >>> would have the same contribution to your growth as a programmer), but also >>> much more because of the many things it has that Scheme doesn't have. You >>> could stop at the "end of Scheme", or you can keep going. >>> >> >> I agree that's probably a better message. >> >> In addition, I think it would behoove us to better manage the "standards" >> perception. The following is I think that... >> >> In the period that I've been paying attention, standards seemed to get >> really important in software industry in the late '80s and early '90s, with >> changes like as the "open systems" movement. And then there was another >> milestone, when there was initially a ha-ha-not-falling-for-that-one-again >> reaction when historically abusive MS introduced .NET and C# (which they had >> to address by creating an "independent, open source alternative"). Plus, >> there are examples of successful standards for other languages, so having a >> standard is itself considered a best practice. >> >> When industry people come from other languages to look at Racket, they've >> already placed Racket in their conceptual framework, where "standard" is >> heavily loaded. So, when these people read in Wikipedia and memetic >> descendants of Wikipedia that R6RS is the "standard", even though I think >> R6RS should be shot in the gut and left in a ditch to die painfully, people >> naturally assume that R6RS is the obvious way to go. "Use non-standard?! >> Get back from me, you satan!" >> >> So they spend the weekend trying to do something in R6RS, stumbling over >> little headaches doing that in Racket, ask questions, and are suspicious >> when Racket people try to tell them to just do things in a non-R6RS way that >> sounds like sneaky "proprietary non-standard extensions lock-in >> bad-engineering" salesmanship. In a day or two, they've lost interest or >> written off "Scheme", and they move on to the next interesting thing to look >> at. >> >> -- >> http://www.neilvandyke.org/ >> >> _________________________________________________ >> For list-related administrative tasks: >> http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users >> > > Neil *exactly nailed* down my experience, in every way, down to the > exact timing. > > Let me expand on that viewpoint a bit for you guys, “from the inside” > so to speak, give you some of the views that’ve floated through my > mind as I’ve gone through this process (I’ll get on to my suggestions > at the end; sorry that this is such a wall-of-text. I just thought > these thoughts might be valuable input to you guys, a point of view > you can’t often introspect.): > > 1) First off, and most importantly, the obsession with DrScheme is > *really* off-putting for any serious developer. I know *piles* of > programming languages, I’ve written hundreds of distinct open-source > libraries, I know more toolsets than I can even remember; coming from > a background like that, seeing references to an integrated IDE > scattered through the *language documentation* itself (as if the IDE > is a part of the language), is … alienating. At this point in my > exploration of Racket (first five minutes to an hour or so), I hadn’t > yet written off the language, exactly, but I was certainly having the > seeds of doing so sowed by this. Hell, on my first visit to the front > page, I was seeing that every single code snippet in the rotating > presentation had to repeatedly inform me that I could execute that > snippet via an IDE. > > Yes, as Neil wrote above, it *might* have some nice things (I can’t > speak to that effect myself, as it won’t compile on Lion yet), but > that’s irrelevant to my point: DrScheme could make me coffee and do my > laundry for me while I program, and as a newcomer to the language, I > would *still* be put off by this level of conceptual integration, > right down to the granular documentation. Whether you like it or not, > whether they apply to DrScheme or not, there are cultural connotations > to IDEs, and a lot of veteran programmers want nothing whatsoever to > do with such a tool. If DrScheme is really such a great thing, then > you should be pipelining developers to it *through* Racket: show them > that Racket, alone, is amazing, and *then* show them that DrScheme can > make development in Racket *even better*. > > 2) The whole “languages” thing is nearly as off-putting as the > DrScheme obsession, but in a different way. When I come across an > instruction saying to add `#lang racket` or `#!r6rs` at the top of the > file, with no explanation of what that does, it feels more than a > little bit too much like “magic.” It feels like the language trying to > pussyfoot around inexperienced developers, hide from me operation that > is considered ‘too complex’ for me to understand. > > As a “veteran programmer” (again, not trying to make myself sound > amazing; I’m absolutely sure that every person who’s replied to this > thread so far is a better programmer than me. I’m just trying to > present myself as a representative of a particular group; the group of > those like yourselves and myself, but excluding those who *already* > know Scheme … that is, the group of those like yourselves who, like > me, are *currently interested* in learning Scheme.), I didn’t > appreciate the feeling that the language was hiding something > important from me (something important enough that it involved > *competely different* syntaxes after that directive, which obviously > means the operation of that directive is “kind’uh a big deal.”) > > Thus, my next step was to attempt to figure out exactly what was being > ‘hidden’ from me, what those directives *actually did*. Luckily, that > didn’t take too long once I knew what I was looking for; but while > abstractions like that are great for getting straight to teaching > beginners about programming without messing about with complex > discussions of environment and conceptual set-up just to understand a > small, simple program (à la HtDP), they’re really not at all so great > for somebody like me, who expects to understand every line of the > first source-code file he’s writing in a language that is new to him, > as he writes them. > > 3) After the issues described above, I realized that the > ‘documentation path’ I’d been following just wasn’t *for* me. Looking > around with a little bit more descerning eye, I realized that all the > documentation I could find seemed to be for children. (Don’t > misunderstand me; I’m not using that as an insult. I mean, quite > literally, the documentation seemed to be of very similar form to the > “teen-specific” books and tutorials that I had seen people passing > around for other languages like Ruby and JavaScript.) > > Instead of getting right into the meat of the language, the things I > cared about learning, the first few links / examples / tutorials were > all about ‘frivolous’ things, such as creating GUIs or images; nothing > that was likely to really teach me anything about the language itself. > Those are the kinds of things you show to beginner programmers, to get > them motivated to keep learning (Hey! Look! I wrote a *program!* It > has a *button!*); and that’s fine, everybody needs motivation. > Unfortunately, a button doesn’t give someone like *me* any motivation; > we need information on the language semantics. We need to know Why > This Language is Better™ Than All The Others, and we’re not going to > get that from ‘yet another GUI toolkit.’ (Again, just as with #1, I > was accosted with this mindset with my very first visit to the > homepage, before I even knew what Racket was: the first code example I > saw was something to do with creating images or a window or something; > I immediately flipped through them, looking for something more > relevant that would give me a better taste of the language) > > 4) Finally, this has already been discussed a bit above, but I thought > I’d make sure I included it in this list: after my troubles with > finding any sane tutorial-style introduction to the “meat” of the > language, I decided the next best step would be to go straight to the > specification. Of course, in looking for a Racket specification, I > found the R6RS specification, and what followed was the exact chain of > thought described by Neil: “so, this is the real specification, and > Racket is just a divergent implementation, that has some weird system > that allows me to trigger it to be conformant. Geeze, anybody remember > Internet Explorer? Really.” As with the above three points, this just > led to yet more annoyance with Racket itself; and now I had an outlet: > the mythical “true Scheme.” All I wanted after this was to find a way > to run R6RS code. I subsequently forgot about Racket, except the > things I needed to know to drop into “R6RS mode,” and began to dive > into the R6RS specification (the first time, mind you, in this entire > debacle, that I felt like I was actually learning a new language, > instead of jumping through hoops.) > > Unrelated note: while, according to Neil and the rest of you, R6RS may > be a bit of a joke in the Scheme community (I can’t really comment > yet, honestly) … it has a *wonderfully* well-written specification. > It’s the best technical specification I’ve ever read. It’s both exact > *and* a great introduction to the language for someone completely > unfamiliar with it. Even if R6RS itself is worthless, I certainly > suggest y’all learn as much as you can from the form and style of that > specification, and bring it back to Racket’s documentation. > > > … which brings me to my recommendations, after all this, and after > Neil’s (and other’s) input here: Improve your documentation-path for > non-beginners. > > Of course, it’s a lot more complex than just doing that; but I hope > everything I’ve shown above will give you some input as to how to do > so. > > For instance, I’m biased, of course, but I really think all of this > beginner introduction content, the HtDP-derived things, should be > moved elsewhere. They’re out of place right in the language’s official > documentation, and I don’t believe their presence there is in fact > *helping* anybody. The documentation is too hard to find and too, > well, “programmer-y” (look at the page; it’s terribly designed, it > looks like any other technical documentation out there.) Create a > seperate site, something like [the][1] [obvious][2] [examples][3] from > the Ruby world; hire or otherwise rope a *good designer* into making > it “flow” for the newcomer, and make *that* the central hub for > newcomers to programming in general and teens. That’ll help expose > them to DrRacket and Racket, and programming things like this in > general; it’s a great start. > > Then, provide a clear documentation path, right from > http://racket-lang.org/ and ending in an actual technical > specification, that caters to programmers who simply want to learn > “Racket Scheme”, the language, none of the other cruft. Make sure that > path has them buried in lingual semantics and syntax as quickly as > possible, make sure it gets them writing code into a text editor and > running it on their command line (of which I guarantee you they > already at least four open) As soon As Possible. > > While you’re at it (and I know this is going to raise some hackles, > but I haven’t pulled any *other* punches in this post, so why start > now?), remove every single reference to DrScheme along that path > (except perhaps exactly one, of the form “Racket provides an > integrated editor and debugger platform for you, if you wish to use > it!” … but perhaps not even that, as there’s no way of writing > “integrated editor and debugger platform” or any other mutation of > that phrase that doesn’t jump out of the page and scream “IDE! IDE! > Run away!” to most of us by now.) And (yes, more hackles), that path > includes the landing page. Select a point in the path, far enough into > the documentation that the average visitor is already going to know > some basic semantics of Racket, know a bit of the answer to that > eternal question I posed above (“Why This Language is Better™ Than All > The Others”); then relegate all mention and coverage of DrScheme to > *after* that chosen point. > > Finally, relatively minor to the other suggestions … somewhere, as > soon as it’s fesible in aforementioned documentation-path, mention the > R6RS specification, and explain *why* it’s not followed. Put some > rationale in there. While you’re at it, make it easier for people to > play with ‘pure’ R6RS, even after having told them that that’s a bad > idea, so they can decide such for themselves. > > [1]: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/ > [2]: http://camping.rubyforge.org/ > [3]: http://hackety-hack.com/ > > Postscript: I know I’m not making any friends with this post. I’m not > trying to. A lot of these opinions, and a lot of the suggestions, are > going to seem offensive from your point of view. That is, in a way, my > point: your collective points of view, as people already knowing > Racket/Scheme, are just as invalid in this discussion of a > non-Schemer’s experience with the Racket website and documentation, as > would be my own input in a discussion of a general non-programmers. I > truely hope, reading this post, you can come to understand my mindset > even if you disagree with the actual arguments made; and that you, > taking that new understanding, can create better documentation, a > better initial experience, for Racket. (-: > > _________________________________________________ > For list-related administrative tasks: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
