As a former Racket user but not a current member of the Racket community, I thought I might toss in my 2c. My reasons for not using Racket are essentially, 1. Parentheses make my head hurt. 2. DrRacket is slow, and VSCode integration is weak.
I've heard the "surface syntax doesn't matter" arguments before, and frankly I find them to be condescending oftentimes. "Oh, you find this parenthetical syntax confusing? That's cute." The reality is clear: syntax is the user interface to a programming language. And anyone who claims that user interfaces don't matter is simply delusional. Although parentheses have a religious following, it should be noted that members of the Racket community have an understandable selection bias on this issue. The rest of the programming world just doesn't seem to feel the same way. I sense that many of the parenthistas among you may discount my experience as coming from one of the "unenlightened," a lesser soul trapped in a desk job writing Java for the last 10 years who has not yet been shown the light. But in fact I was trained in Racket by one of its creators. I'm also a PhD student in computer science and an early adopter of languages. I am aware of and admire much of the research that's gone into the Racket that exists today. I see the beauty in language's foundations. I've even attended RacketCon. Still, I dread having to work in Racket. It's not lost on me that Racket is a "better" language than Python in many respects. It's just that Python offers a much, _much_ better user experience in terms of its package ecosystem, developer experience and, yes, syntax. As an outsider it seems clear to me that if the Racket community wishes to spread the gospel of language-oriented programming, it must shed its historical attachment to parentheses. I see Pyret as being the first domino to fall in this regard. Just my 2c, Samuel On Monday, July 22, 2019 at 8:20:55 PM UTC-7, Andrew Gwozdziewycz wrote: > > On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 7:15 AM Alexis King <lexi....@gmail.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > > On Jul 22, 2019, at 14:16, Dexter Lagan <dexte...@gmail.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > > To say that Racket is so defined by its syntax that it will cease to be > distinguishable from any other language if it is changed is absurd, and > it’s frankly insulting to all the people who have put so much effort into > every part of Racket. > > You have an advantage of being well invested in the Racket ecosystem > already. How do you convince someone _else_, perhaps in industry, that > Racket is interesting? It's pretty hard to say: "Look! Scribble and > Typed Racket, and contracts, and 10 other things make up this really > awesome ecosystem all running on a single VM, and they can all share > code!" Why? Because it's a _lot_ to digest, a _lot_ to try to > understand / invest in, and we live in a world where Go, a language > that effectively contains only 1970s language technology, is > dominating because of its simplicity and distinct lack of features. > > On the other hand, people look at parens, think Lisp, completely > discount it because they heard "parens were really annoying to read," > or had a bad experience in college, and then move on anyway. People > judge a book by its cover, and they judge a language by its syntax. > > Growing a language community is _really, really, really hard_, and is > only going to get harder as Racket grows in complexity, and other > languages come up that have immediately familiar syntax, and a simple > to understand core. A new syntax might checkmark the first point, but > I kind of think that the #lang ecosystem, _might actually be doing a > disservice_ to Racket. It's all the traditional complaints about > macros "you have to learn the original author's DSL" mixed with "you > have to learn the original author's half broken / buggy parser / > syntax and quirks, the new semantics it adds on, _and_ the library > that goes along with it, too." Oh, and "it's all mixed in with this > other stuff written in #lang racket, with these silly parens. I AM > CONFUSED!" > > Not sure how to resolve all this, and I'm sorry for lacking a central > thesis in my reply, except to say that "syntax matters" and "Racket > isn't easy" ... > > -- > http://www.apgwoz.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/6db41009-cc9b-4129-b2d1-18007eec650f%40googlegroups.com.
