As an additional data point, I can share my very fast introduction into Racket and the community. You asked for experiences where the community may have made people feel unwelcome, but mine is a positive experience. I share it to perhaps give an angle of what *is* right, and the parts of the racket community which helped me go from an "outsider" to feeling welcome and secure. My brief experience with this community has been wonderful, and I want to contribute to making that experience the norm, if it is not already.
A few short months ago I came across The Little Schemer as recommended by a mentor of mine, and in my subsequent Scheme research came across your Racket Con videos on Pollen. Your enthusiasm made me feel okay about being enthusiastic myself! I watched a dozen or so Racket Con talks from as many speakers. Seeing how enthusiastic and dynamic the speakers were showed me that it was the entire community, not any single person, pushing this forward with passion and care. This apparent diversity of people and opinion was in stark contrast to many of the language communities I'd studied or participated in up to this point, which I'm sure you could guess. As others have alluded to, the documentation might have intimidated me (as any documentation for a new language does), and my foray was instead through video. When I landed on the racket homepage and saw that Racket Week was just weeks away in my own city of Salt Lake, I knew I'd have to go, despite my uneasiness. For context, I attended the University of Utah in parallel with an internship at a startup, but dropped out after two years to go full time at the startup. In light of that decision I was nervous about being back on campus among academics I admired, and I questioned whether I was really qualified to even attend. Each day of Racket Week put me more at ease, as I found mutual interests with other attendees and had interesting conversations that continued after the week was up. During introductions on day one (in the LOP course), I took note of people I'd like to pester about interesting things, and the conversations during off-time and meals had me stumbling into some of the coolest projects, ideas and passions I've ever heard. The week, for me, was a resounding success, and I hope to be integrating myself further into the community as the months and years go by. >From my perspective, the nature of the language itself may have been the biggest intimidating factor: there is a long history of very, very smart people who are very passionate about pushing this forward. Nobody enjoys making a fool of themselves and my biggest worry was asking a stupid question or being too unfamiliar with tooling. From the technical perspective, DrRacket did more for me as a gentle (but powerful) introduction to Racket than anything else I've used with any language. When I did encounter problems, the documentation and its ease of access from DrRacket made my previous documentation experience feel like reading a thesaurus, when I really wanted an encyclopedia. Racket's tooling is in a league of its own in terms of usability, and it was not a factor in deterring me. I'd echo Dexter's sentiment to add some practical, hard examples somewhere, aimed at users of C like languages. I'm convinced of the power of LOP now that I've gotten the full context from Matthias during Racket Week and I will be using it extensively. But documentation of macros and building my own language was difficult to reason about on my early encounters, when I was still fighting the urge to slap curly braces somewhere in my code. I don't know how that gets solved, because Racket's power was both its draw as well as what intimidated me. I may have been lucky in being in the right place at the right time, but I wanted to voice my appreciation for what has been done so far. I heard about Racket was less than two months ago and now I feel more enthusiastic than I have since learning TI-Basic on my TI-84 and sharing games with my friends in high school. This experience wasn't without a good dose of anxiety, but making friends in the community made all the difference. Caleb On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 2:46 PM Matthew Butterick <m...@mbtype.com> wrote: > I'm not a member of Racket management. But I spend a lot of time using & > promoting Racket. Most recently, I taught the Beautiful Racket Workshop as > part of Racket Week 2019. > > I care a lot about Racket — the technology, but especially the human > community that makes it possible. > > I've heard from a few people that events before, during, or after Racket > Week left them questioning Racket's commitment to making everyone feel > welcome. And to be honest, it wasn't the first time. > > This saddens me. It's not consistent with my own values. It's not what I > want Racket to stand for. I want everyone to feel welcome, wanted, and > valued. > > In a nearby thread, Matthew Flatt talked about the importance of "reducing > barriers" in a technical sense. But it matters in a community sense too, of > course. > > If Racket is putting up social barriers — even unwittingly — that are > frustrating newcomers (or existing members) then we ought to be able to > hear this with an open mind & heart, and make adjustments. This is our duty > as empathetic, moral members of a community. > > I'm not sure what I can do to improve this situation. I'm open to > suggestions. I can at least offer the following (I would rather risk > looking foolish than doing nothing): > > > 1) If you've had an experience where the Racket community made you feel > less than totally welcomed, I invite you to add it to this thread, or > contact me privately. If you want details of your story shared, in some > anonymized way, I can do that. > > I recognize the irony of making this offer on the racket-users mailing > list — those who've had a bad experience are likely long gone. But I also > know there are people here who, like me, want to help make Racket better, > even on rough days. > > > 2) Gently, I suggest that we work together to reduce the volatility of > these conversations. I know that some feel that these matters are better > handled away from the racket-users list. But this is counterproductive: it > amounts to saying that we should feel free to harvest the benefits of > Racket-the-technology while avoiding obligations to Racket-the-community. > As a matter of logic and ethics, I can't see how they are divisible. > > > 3) Today, I'm a reasonably well-adjusted adult (or at least my dog thinks > so). But a long time ago, I was a fat and dorky and smart kid. For years, I > was physically and verbally bullied at school. It was relentless and > terrifying. But as was true for a lot of kids like me during that era, > computers were a refuge. They never judged me. They rewarded my curiosity. > > I mention this not to put my experience on a footing with anyone else's. > But it reminds me that while our contributions to Racket may be public, > what Racket MEANS to each of us is necessarily private. Right now, there > are people in our community for whom Racket is a bright spot in difficult > times. If you haven't been there yet — you will. > > To my mind, discussing these matters openly is about preserving the > paramount virtue of a community based on sharing knowledge: to accept > everyone just as they are. When we're falling short in this regard, we > shouldn't avoid these facts, lest we make a virtue of ignorance. Or if we > can't do this, and people bypass Racket in preference to other communities, > then we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. > > With much gratitude to everyone who makes Racket possible. > > > -- > 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. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/8964B1F7-C0A5-44BA-AFE3-FF87E038F3CE%40mbtype.com > . > -- 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. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/CAOiLBSJinaQNkgT%3DjyDd1xFKvgt_rR7J%3Di-mnty3k2Y10CQ9dA%40mail.gmail.com.
