[racket-users] typed racket backend/ir & gpu computing

[Neil Van Dyke]

Is there a specified/stable Typed Racket intermediate representation 
that has all the type info resolved, and which separate projects could 
build upon, for other target backends or analysis?


Reason for asking...

I was idly thinking of various ways to do GPU/TPU "supercomputing" from 
a normal Racket program, or to specify GPU bits in a Racket-ish source 
language.


One general way involves compiling a normal Racket/-ish program to both 
Racket VM and (at least some of the procedures or closures, or parts of 
same) to a language/IR like for OpenCL (or one of the other 
existing/emerging ones).  From there, even a simple implementation might 
be able to do things like automatically run a chunk/extent of algorithm 
on the GPU, when a static/dynamic heuristic suggests that the overhead 
of going to GPU is worthwhile.


Having very little time for this weekend side project, and not wanting 
to spend it reimplementing type inferencing or annotation... Is there a 
specified/stable IR of Typed Racket that would be easy to work with for 
this?  (Or would it be easier to do something simple from scratch in 
Racket (like a syntax transformation-heavy `#lang`), or to try to adapt 
the Pre-Scheme C target for this purpose?)


(I'm aware we could write numerical bits in, say, a C-like OpenCL 
language, and then do Racket FFI of the OpenCL API to run the GPU bits 
from our program otherwise coded in Racket.  I'm more interested in the 
problem of ways of compiling a Racket-ish language to run on the GPU.)


(Motivation: I have a new GPU computer toy, 
"https://www.neilvandyke.org/machine-learning/;, and, while some of my 
old Racket packages are still great for scraping/importing data for 
what's now called "data science", I then have to switch over to various 
growing stacks of software tools in other languages. Top-down, I could 
write wrappers to use some of those other tools from Racket.  But I 
wonder whether there are opportunities being missed, from a potential 
Racket bottom-up, while most people are busy with the big ML/stats 
toolkits and the algorithmic languages that are currently popular in 
data science.  Also, there is only so much Jupyter Notebook in a Web 
browser that a person can take, before they want to also understand more 
about the new metal. :)


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Re: [racket-users] Re: hackernews

[Neil Van Dyke]

This piece by Danny Hillis (which I just happened to cite on a very 
different topic) is an easy read, and perhaps inspirational on the value 
of explanation and cross-pollination, such as one might do when bridging 
communities of interest, with popular forum participation and blogs:


http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/

If you like it, other writings and videos by/with/about Feynman have a 
lot more.


(Also, if you ever have an opportunity to start an article as "One day 
when I was having lunch with Richard Feynman", you must take it.)


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Re: [racket-users] off-topic: SQLite

['John Clements' via Racket Users]

cf. Relevant tweet from Patrick Walton (I worked with Patrick on Rust at 
Mozilla):

https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/1073755208558100480

> On Dec 15, 2018, at 13:52, George Neuner  wrote:
> 
> 
> This hit the news yesterday:  SQLite contained a remote code execution bug.  
> According to the ZDNet article the bug has been fixed as  of  v3.26.0 
> released December 1st.  If your application uses SQLite, you probably should 
> update it.   Hopefully the Racket maintainers will update the library (where 
> appropriate) in the next Racket release.
>   • security advisory: https://blade.tencent.com/magellan/index_en.html
>   • ZDNet article: 
> https://www.zdnet.com/article/sqlite-bug-impacts-thousands-of-apps-including-all-chromium-based-browsers/
> 
> George
> 
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[racket-users] Are contracts incompatible with Typed Racket?

[jtherrmann]

I recently started learning Racket and quickly switched to Typed Racket. 
For the most part I've been very happy with it, but I'm unclear on whether 
it's possible to create contracts in Typed Racket (for expressing 
constraints other than type requirements). I've been unable to find an 
explicit answer to my question in the docs for either contracts or Typed 
Racket, but I've run several experiments and it seems that contracts are 
incompatible with Typed Racket. This discussion 
 seems to support my conclusion.

If you can't create your own contracts in Typed Racket, are you meant to 
limit all of your contract-related needs to type requirements? Or just use 
vanilla Racket if you need a full-fledged contract system? Additionally, 
could someone point me to the documentation that would have answered by 
question (if it exists)?

Thanks!

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[racket-users] off-topic: SQLite

[George Neuner]

This hit the news yesterday:  SQLite contained a remote code execution 
bug.  According to the ZDNet article the bug has been fixed as  of  
v3.26.0 released December 1st.  If your application uses SQLite, you 
probably should update it.   Hopefully the Racket maintainers will 
update the library (where appropriate) in the next Racket release.


 * *security advisory:* https://blade.tencent.com/magellan/index_en.html
 * *ZDNet article:*
   
https://www.zdnet.com/article/sqlite-bug-impacts-thousands-of-apps-including-all-chromium-based-browsers/


George

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[racket-users] Re: hackernews

[Jason Stewart]

>
> RFB is a wonderful idea.  Aside from the main site, there is a lot of 
catching-up to do (quantity-wise anyway) compared to something like 
JavaScript or Ruby.

>
I'm not sure if HN even matters if there are enough good blog posts out 
there.  Search does a decent job of getting people to those sorts of post.

>
Biggest obstacles I see to filling the web with Racket articles would be 
the high quality of existing documentation, and the straight-forward nature 
of the language itself.  When it comes to things like C++, PHP, and 
JavaScript, there is so much room for comment because they are all so full 
of arbitrary / strange / questionable choices that demand further 
explanation, and once explained, open the field to debate over which 
(necessary) defensive strategies are best.

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Re: [racket-users] hackernews

[Peter Schmiedeskamp]

I’m probably guilty of already being part of this task-force. To add, I wonder 
if there’d be value in some longer, blog-form replies to interesting HackerNews 
queries.

For example, someone was extolling the virtues of some new system for building 
and packaging simple GUI apps for Linux using Python. I’ve poked around with 
the GUI and packaging facilities of Racket enough to feel like Racket has a 
pretty good story to tell, at least for smaller cross-platform apps. A short 
blog showing the end-to-end creation of a small GUI app, with emphasis on 
showing the symbiosis of the GUI library and the excellent raco packaging and 
distribution facilities would be a great “reply” to such an article on HN.

I wonder if there's a way that these use cases could at least be collected... 
maybe as an RFB—Request For Blog. Time is always at a premium, but I could 
imagine picking off a blog post here and there even though I’m a decidedly rank 
novice Racketeer.

Maybe there’s already a list somewhere? Maybe RFBs could be a section of the 
Racket Blog?

Best,
Peter

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Re: [racket-users] hackernews

[Jens Axel Søgaard]

Den fre. 14. dec. 2018 kl. 00.53 skrev Neil Van Dyke :

> This might be a bad idea, and normally I disapprove of this sort of
> thing, but... does anyone want to take on the job of RACKET EVANGELISM
> STRIKE FORCE, among a concentration of startup-types and other software
> practitioners?
>
> Specifically, you'd participate regularly in Y Combinator's popular
> "Hacker News" Web forum, "https://news.ycombinator.com/;, and, when the
> not-unusual occasion to mention/show a strength of Racket presents
> itself, do so.
>
> I occasionally see Racket mentioned on HN, but not nearly as often as it
> legitimately could be.
>

FWIW - here is my bookmark for "Has Racket been mentioned lately?"

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=racket=byDate=0=pastWeek=all

/Jens Axel

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