Hi, I've never been a great programmer although I've done a fair amount of programming back in the days of C, Pascal, etc. I think racket is the right language for me based on expressive power, etc. but I confess it currently seems like about the worst language for me in terms of "can't see the forest for the trees". I am hoping someone out there can recommend a strong editor / IDE which makes it trivial to collapse blocks of code or otherwise make it a lot easier to navigate through long racket programs. Something which would allow me to look at a program in outline format and then expand/collapse the outline when I need/don't need to see details. It's cool (really cool, in fact) that racket comes with DrRacket - I think that really showcases how extraordinary racket is. However, it's already apparent that, for me, I need something to manage / hide the "visual clutter" of scheme with all its parens and (for lack of a better word) mind-numbing presentation. Maybe, in time, I'll get personally stronger but I won't get there at all at this rate.
Pascal was probably my favorite language in terms of hiding details. It encouraged an "outline" form of program development where I could could create sub-procedures where I could ignore large blocks of code or even remove them completely out of sight. C wasn't so great in this regard. I am determined to master racket and I am hoping it will be the last programming language I ever really need to learn (because of its strong "batteries included" orientation; respectable speed; wide range of application; and on-going development history). But I am having a miserable time "reading" it. Everything sticks out at the same time for me and I am unable to really focus on top down thinking -- which is how my mind works. My visual "recall" is very poor, which contributes to my problem (I can't remember where things are/ how they are coded if they are not right in front of me). I have been out of programming for a long, long time so I really have no idea what the state of the art is in IDE and programming editors. I know there probably is a great environment which does a solid job of supporting racket development but - MOST OF ALL - makes it trivial to collapse/expand/"disappear" the majority of program code so I don't have to wade through stuff which doesn't concern me at the moment. Other strong IDE/ programming editor features (e.g., super searching across packages and files) would, of course, be great but for me I fear it mostly comes down to ability to bundle related portions of the program together and make them collapse down to a single line. An open/free sourced IDE which is available on Linux would be best, although I could consider developing on Mac or (ugh) Windows. I am open to paying money, but I would prefer to not be under a vendor's thumb. Maybe EMACS or VIM or even Atom could make me happy -- if I could find the extensions to handle the collapse/expand and (ideally) strong ability to keep the parens sorted out. Any suggestions are appreciated. I really am embarrassed to be asking this sort of question but I really don't know how to go forward without some guidance. Thanks for any suggestions. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
