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 racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
