Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Hi, can the text on the home page be changed from Racket is a programming language to Racket is the coolest programming language on earth. Spend a bit of time with it, and your programs will grow more beautiful in front of your eyes every day of your life. - M.F. Thanks, Stephen On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 9:10 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: 6 hours ago, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote: Right now, we're already using JS to decide which of the 3 initial code snippets to display. We're using it for more -- to flip through the examples. Most of these browsers won't even use the CSS so things that should be hidden are not. So the change I did makes things better in the fact that the display shows something sensible rather than the mess that it showed before -- it now shows each example with its explanation rather than all of the examples and then all of the explanations. As an aside, I suspect that non-JavaScript-browsers are more popular among people who complain to Eli than than among the general visitor population. :) [Besides supporting such browsers to some extent (for example, there's no sane way to get the documentation search to work there), it's also useful in the sense that it's closer to what crawlers see.] -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev -- -- Stephen De Gabrielle stephen.degabrie...@acm.org Telephone +44 (0)20 85670911 Mobile+44 (0)79 85189045 http://www.degabrielle.name/stephen _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Do you mean that it requires JS to work? What about non-JS browsers? (There are some people who find it important -- I've even made some changes to the front page to make it friendlier to text browsers.) On 2011-05-07, Noel Welsh noelwe...@gmail.com wrote: Sure does. We have a Javascript client. (All the API docs *should* be visible to everyone, but currently you need a login to read them. It was simpler to implement things this way, and we're in the process of changing to a more friendly system.) N. On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:11 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: The question is whether it works with Apache. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://www.barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
You have to contact the Myna server somehow to get suggestions. You can do this via the server or via the client, with the usual tradeoffs. I would go with the JS client as it's much faster to set up, and code the HTML in such a way that it still works if JS is disabled. (This is straightforward, and the example in the API docs does this.) N. On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: Do you mean that it requires JS to work? What about non-JS browsers? (There are some people who find it important -- I've even made some changes to the front page to make it friendlier to text browsers.) _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Right now, we're already using JS to decide which of the 3 initial code snippets to display. So, why not start with using Noel's tool for that, and go from there? We already have a built-in group of possibilities to measure, and we're already using JavaScript. As an aside, I suspect that non-JavaScript-browsers are more popular among people who complain to Eli than than among the general visitor population. :) On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 9:38 AM, Noel Welsh noelwe...@gmail.com wrote: You have to contact the Myna server somehow to get suggestions. You can do this via the server or via the client, with the usual tradeoffs. I would go with the JS client as it's much faster to set up, and code the HTML in such a way that it still works if JS is disabled. (This is straightforward, and the example in the API docs does this.) N. On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: Do you mean that it requires JS to work? What about non-JS browsers? (There are some people who find it important -- I've even made some changes to the front page to make it friendlier to text browsers.) _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev -- sam th sa...@ccs.neu.edu _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
6 hours ago, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote: Right now, we're already using JS to decide which of the 3 initial code snippets to display. We're using it for more -- to flip through the examples. Most of these browsers won't even use the CSS so things that should be hidden are not. So the change I did makes things better in the fact that the display shows something sensible rather than the mess that it showed before -- it now shows each example with its explanation rather than all of the examples and then all of the explanations. As an aside, I suspect that non-JavaScript-browsers are more popular among people who complain to Eli than than among the general visitor population. :) [Besides supporting such browsers to some extent (for example, there's no sane way to get the documentation search to work there), it's also useful in the sense that it's closer to what crawlers see.] -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Justin Zamora jus...@zamora.com wrote: A sentence like that would be a good replacement for the awful, Racket is a programming language currently on the front page of racket-lang.org We are men of science; untested hypotheses do not become us. Luckily, your buddies at Untyped have recently created a system called Myna for testing these kind of hypotheses: http://mynaapp.com/ We'd *love* to use Racket as a case study. I'm sure you have enough traffic to get some good results fairly quickly, and this problem is a straight-forward application of Myna. If you've heard of A/B testing, this blog post explains why Myna isn't A/B testing: http://untyped.com/untyping/2011/02/11/stop-ab-testing-and-make-out-like-a-bandit/ Cheers, Noel PS: Anyone else reading this who would like to use Myna -- drop me an email at this address or n...@untyped.com. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
I assume it's not news that racket.org is owned by a museum curator in sweden? (He says after typing racket.org) S. On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Noel Welsh noelwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Justin Zamora jus...@zamora.com wrote: A sentence like that would be a good replacement for the awful, Racket is a programming language currently on the front page of racket-lang.org We are men of science; untested hypotheses do not become us. Luckily, your buddies at Untyped have recently created a system called Myna for testing these kind of hypotheses: http://mynaapp.com/ We'd *love* to use Racket as a case study. I'm sure you have enough traffic to get some good results fairly quickly, and this problem is a straight-forward application of Myna. If you've heard of A/B testing, this blog post explains why Myna isn't A/B testing: http://untyped.com/untyping/2011/02/11/stop-ab-testing-and-make-out-like-a-bandit/ Cheers, Noel PS: Anyone else reading this who would like to use Myna -- drop me an email at this address or n...@untyped.com. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev -- -- Stephen De Gabrielle stephen.degabrie...@acm.org Telephone +44 (0)20 85670911 Mobile+44 (0)79 85189045 http://www.degabrielle.name/stephen _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Racket -- Squash your bugs with it! On 05/05/2011 01:26 PM, Rex Page wrote: Bugs in your programs? Racket can help. On Wed, 4 May 2011, Matthias Felleisen wrote: Racket is the coolest programming language on earth. Spend a bit of time with it, and your programs will grow more beautiful in front of your eyes every day of your life. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev -- Eduardo Bellani omnia mutantur, nihil interit. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
-Original Message- From: dev-boun...@racket-lang.org [mailto:dev-boun...@racket-lang.org] On Behalf Of Eduardo Bellani snip -- Eduardo Bellani omnia mutantur, nihil interit. The word 'omnia' frequently leads to contradictions, particularly when applying a sentence containing this word to itself. The sentence 'omnia mutantur, nihil interit' implies that even the implication of this sentence will be subjected to change :) Jos _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
In retrospect I think this post was a bit opaque. So, some exposition: We have a hypothesis: changing the description of Racket will increase adoption. We can measure this and optimise for it. The measure of adoption could be doesn't bounce or downloads Racket, for example. (Bouncing means leaving the page immediately. Yes these measures aren't perfect but the great is the enemy of the good in these situations.) We have various different descriptions we can try. Myna is a system for optimising the choice of description. A/B testing is the current industry standard. It is essentially hypothesis testing. Myna uses better mathematics to achieve better results. HTH, N. On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Noel Welsh noelwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Justin Zamora jus...@zamora.com wrote: A sentence like that would be a good replacement for the awful, Racket is a programming language currently on the front page of racket-lang.org We are men of science; untested hypotheses do not become us. Luckily, your buddies at Untyped have recently created a system called Myna for testing these kind of hypotheses: http://mynaapp.com/ We'd *love* to use Racket as a case study. I'm sure you have enough traffic to get some good results fairly quickly, and this problem is a straight-forward application of Myna. If you've heard of A/B testing, this blog post explains why Myna isn't A/B testing: http://untyped.com/untyping/2011/02/11/stop-ab-testing-and-make-out-like-a-bandit/ Cheers, Noel PS: Anyone else reading this who would like to use Myna -- drop me an email at this address or n...@untyped.com. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
For what time period should we leave the description constant to test this conjecture? On May 6, 2011, at 10:33 AM, Noel Welsh wrote: In retrospect I think this post was a bit opaque. So, some exposition: We have a hypothesis: changing the description of Racket will increase adoption. We can measure this and optimise for it. The measure of adoption could be doesn't bounce or downloads Racket, for example. (Bouncing means leaving the page immediately. Yes these measures aren't perfect but the great is the enemy of the good in these situations.) We have various different descriptions we can try. Myna is a system for optimising the choice of description. A/B testing is the current industry standard. It is essentially hypothesis testing. Myna uses better mathematics to achieve better results. HTH, N. On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Noel Welsh noelwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Justin Zamora jus...@zamora.com wrote: A sentence like that would be a good replacement for the awful, Racket is a programming language currently on the front page of racket-lang.org We are men of science; untested hypotheses do not become us. Luckily, your buddies at Untyped have recently created a system called Myna for testing these kind of hypotheses: http://mynaapp.com/ We'd *love* to use Racket as a case study. I'm sure you have enough traffic to get some good results fairly quickly, and this problem is a straight-forward application of Myna. If you've heard of A/B testing, this blog post explains why Myna isn't A/B testing: http://untyped.com/untyping/2011/02/11/stop-ab-testing-and-make-out-like-a-bandit/ Cheers, Noel PS: Anyone else reading this who would like to use Myna -- drop me an email at this address or n...@untyped.com. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
The technology Noel is suggesting randomly chooses whether to give the current description, or some new description (which we would have to write). Then it measures which description leads more people to download Racket. On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 10:41 AM, Matthias Felleisen matth...@ccs.neu.edu wrote: For what time period should we leave the description constant to test this conjecture? On May 6, 2011, at 10:33 AM, Noel Welsh wrote: In retrospect I think this post was a bit opaque. So, some exposition: We have a hypothesis: changing the description of Racket will increase adoption. We can measure this and optimise for it. The measure of adoption could be doesn't bounce or downloads Racket, for example. (Bouncing means leaving the page immediately. Yes these measures aren't perfect but the great is the enemy of the good in these situations.) We have various different descriptions we can try. Myna is a system for optimising the choice of description. A/B testing is the current industry standard. It is essentially hypothesis testing. Myna uses better mathematics to achieve better results. HTH, N. On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Noel Welsh noelwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Justin Zamora jus...@zamora.com wrote: A sentence like that would be a good replacement for the awful, Racket is a programming language currently on the front page of racket-lang.org We are men of science; untested hypotheses do not become us. Luckily, your buddies at Untyped have recently created a system called Myna for testing these kind of hypotheses: http://mynaapp.com/ We'd *love* to use Racket as a case study. I'm sure you have enough traffic to get some good results fairly quickly, and this problem is a straight-forward application of Myna. If you've heard of A/B testing, this blog post explains why Myna isn't A/B testing: http://untyped.com/untyping/2011/02/11/stop-ab-testing-and-make-out-like-a-bandit/ Cheers, Noel PS: Anyone else reading this who would like to use Myna -- drop me an email at this address or n...@untyped.com. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev -- sam th sa...@ccs.neu.edu _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Matthias Felleisen wrote at 05/06/2011 10:41 AM: For what time period should we leave the description constant to test this conjecture? Someone mathematically-inclined did something similar-sounding a decade(?) ago, for US national political campaign fund-raising. From what I could gather, the campaign Web sites would automatically experiment with varying the approach, *on a per-visitor basis*, to find optimal ways of presenting itself. I think they were searching the combinatorics of different text, positioning, dollar amount alternatives, etc., and also correlating with messages in the news. In one respect, they had it easy: dollars donated immediately through the site is an exceptionally good success metric. I suspect that the party didn't publish on their setup (just guessing; I don't follow such things), and the person I'm thinking of has moved on to doing different kinds of work. -- http://www.neilvandyke.org/ _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
An hour ago, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote: The technology Noel is suggesting randomly chooses whether to give the current description, or some new description (which we would have to write). Then it measures which description leads more people to download Racket. The question is whether it works with Apache. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
(FWIW, I don't have any strong issues with Java, but refering to the best parts of Java is asking to be made into a joke.) Yesterday, Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote: Justin is right other than the Java part. Eli is right with the amendment of -1 for the suggestion that Java has good parts worth borrowing. (-: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:51 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: 20 minutes ago, Justin Zamora wrote: On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 3:20 AM, D Herring dherr...@tentpost.com wrote: You might emphasize that Racket is a new language, borrowing the best parts of Scheme (and other languages?) and extending it with these features... A sentence like that would be a good replacement for the awful, Racket is a programming language currently on the front page of racket-lang.org Perhaps something like Racket is a new language that borrows the best parts of Scheme, Java, and other languages and extends them with advanced features such as contracts, types, user-defined languages, a complete GUI framework and other modern features. -1 for any mention of Java. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
On 04/29/2011 12:10 PM, Matthias Felleisen wrote: On Apr 29, 2011, at 11:31 AM, Neil Van Dyke wrote: Scheme is usually a liability when someone used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP). Sad. but true. Exacerbated by lecturers who refused to keep up with the world around them, thus projecting their failings onto their language of choice. It took me several years to forget and some very made-for-lisp coding projects at work before I gave lisp a second try. The PLT logo still messes with my subconscious. You might emphasize that Racket is a new language, borrowing the best parts of Scheme (and other languages?) and extending it with these features... Put a big What is Racket? link on the Racket home page. Fill it with features and promise. (c.f. http://qt.nokia.com/ or http://python.org/) Also collect a set of cool programs for people to use. It is easier for people to understand this was implemented in Racket than Racket's features might let me make that. Many people make decisions based on first impressions. When I was an undergrad, I preferred Clean over the ML languages largely because the former had a side-scrolling game demo... Here's another anecdote. http://prog21.dadgum.com/97.html - Daniel _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
20 minutes ago, Justin Zamora wrote: On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 3:20 AM, D Herring dherr...@tentpost.com wrote: You might emphasize that Racket is a new language, borrowing the best parts of Scheme (and other languages?) and extending it with these features... A sentence like that would be a good replacement for the awful, Racket is a programming language currently on the front page of racket-lang.org Perhaps something like Racket is a new language that borrows the best parts of Scheme, Java, and other languages and extends them with advanced features such as contracts, types, user-defined languages, a complete GUI framework and other modern features. -1 for any mention of Java. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Justin is right other than the Java part. Eli is right with the amendment of -1 for the suggestion that Java has good parts worth borrowing. (-: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:51 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: 20 minutes ago, Justin Zamora wrote: On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 3:20 AM, D Herring dherr...@tentpost.com wrote: You might emphasize that Racket is a new language, borrowing the best parts of Scheme (and other languages?) and extending it with these features... A sentence like that would be a good replacement for the awful, Racket is a programming language currently on the front page of racket-lang.org Perhaps something like Racket is a new language that borrows the best parts of Scheme, Java, and other languages and extends them with advanced features such as contracts, types, user-defined languages, a complete GUI framework and other modern features. -1 for any mention of Java. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Racket is the coolest programming language on earth. Spend a bit of time with it, and your programs will grow more beautiful in front of your eyes every day of your life. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
On 05/01/2011 02:20 AM, D Herring wrote: Also collect a set of cool programs for people to use. It is easier for people to understand this was implemented in Racket than Racket's features might let me make that. Many people make decisions based on first impressions. When I was an undergrad, I preferred Clean over the ML languages largely because the former had a side-scrolling game demo... Here's another anecdote. http://prog21.dadgum.com/97.html How many other open source languages or libraries make it as easy to write native GUI applications on Windows, OS X and X11? I'm having a hard time thinking of any. Surely this is an opportunity for some killer demo programs. -- Brian Mastenbrook br...@mastenbrook.net http://brian.mastenbrook.net/ _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
What's the benefit of using regexp-match instead of port-string ? Thanks, Dave On 04/29/2011 07:23 AM, John Clements wrote: This is just one random guy, but it's interesting to see how Racket is perceived. Excerpts from a conversation on stackoverflow about Racket: Thanks. And that's why I'm starting to learn to dislike Scheme, despite everything else. – MCXXIII yesterday In that case, it's a good thing that Racket isn't Scheme. – John Clements 20 hours ago I don't know if I'd like to turn to some fringe language. Also seems odd to me to call it a Scheme implementation if it's not meant to be Scheme at all. I really like standards and Scheme seems to suffer greatly in that area. I think I may have to switch to some other form of Lisp. Clojure seems potentially nice at a glance. – MCXXIII 20 hours ago Ah! You said the magic word! Clojure is a LISP implementation in a very similar way that Racket is a Scheme implementation. Put differently: if you don't object to Clojure, there's no good reason to object to Racket. – John Clements 13 hours ago Racket comes off as Scheme, but not really while Clojure comes off as Clojure (inspired by Lisp). At least that's the impression. It's kinda like how Java was inspired by C/C++ yet Java is Java. Also, I could go learn INTERCAL too. It wouldn't be very useful aside from the pure experience, and maybe with INTERCAL that experience would be worth it, but in the case of Racket I might as well get that exact same experience from something more mainstream. So, if my objective is to learn some form of Lisp, I'd go with one of the three major dialects, not Racket. – MCXXIII 5 hours ago Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Obviously, Racket is still working to define itself as a separate entity. – John Clements 0 secs ago You can see the original thread here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5806222/opening-urls-with-scheme/5811345#5811345 John Clements _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
The Web is full of outdated and/or ill-informed references to PLT and Racket. People see these, and the bad information propagates memetically -- perpetuating and increasing. One thing Racket people could do is a one-time blitz of existing bad info all over the Web, to correct as many of these as possible, and promote the message of how Racket is positioned. This can include updating various wikis, posting corrections or updates in otherwise stale Web forum threads, emailing maintainers of non-wiki sites suggested updates to their pages, emailing blog authors who do not have comments, etc. This is a one-time thing, to update the static parts of the Web, distinct from the ongoing activities of participating in dialogs as they happen. Before doing the blitz, an internal refresher course on the message wouldn't hurt, so that the blitzing by multiple people is fairly consistent. Example of something to decide: Under what circumstances should Scheme ever be mentioned, and how should Racket's relationship to Scheme be characterized when it is mentioned? I can tell you that the word Scheme is often useful when a prospective Racketeer starts out wanting Scheme, and then they get pointed to Racket. And I think Scheme might *sometimes* be useful when someone academically-inclined is asking about interesting programming languages and we can tout Scheme as part of our heritage (or, alternatively, just point to the PL research). Scheme is usually a liability when someone used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP). Scheme is also a liability when someone is almost in the Racket fold, but then goes Googling around for information on Scheme and gets all confused, time-wasted, and turned off. -- http://www.neilvandyke.org/ _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Thanks John for the report. Two questions please: 1. Could you point me to a standards document for Clojure? 2. Could you point me to a criteria that classify Racket as a 'fringe' language and Clojure as a non-fringe language? -- Matthias On Apr 29, 2011, at 10:23 AM, John Clements wrote: This is just one random guy, but it's interesting to see how Racket is perceived. Excerpts from a conversation on stackoverflow about Racket: Thanks. And that's why I'm starting to learn to dislike Scheme, despite everything else. – MCXXIII yesterday In that case, it's a good thing that Racket isn't Scheme. – John Clements 20 hours ago I don't know if I'd like to turn to some fringe language. Also seems odd to me to call it a Scheme implementation if it's not meant to be Scheme at all. I really like standards and Scheme seems to suffer greatly in that area. I think I may have to switch to some other form of Lisp. Clojure seems potentially nice at a glance. – MCXXIII 20 hours ago Ah! You said the magic word! Clojure is a LISP implementation in a very similar way that Racket is a Scheme implementation. Put differently: if you don't object to Clojure, there's no good reason to object to Racket. – John Clements 13 hours ago Racket comes off as Scheme, but not really while Clojure comes off as Clojure (inspired by Lisp). At least that's the impression. It's kinda like how Java was inspired by C/C++ yet Java is Java. Also, I could go learn INTERCAL too. It wouldn't be very useful aside from the pure experience, and maybe with INTERCAL that experience would be worth it, but in the case of Racket I might as well get that exact same experience from something more mainstream. So, if my objective is to learn some form of Lisp, I'd go with one of the three major dialects, not Racket. – MCXXIII 5 hours ago Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Obviously, Racket is still working to define itself as a separate entity. – John Clements 0 secs ago You can see the original thread here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5806222/opening-urls-with-scheme/5811345#5811345 John Clements _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
On Apr 29, 2011, at 11:31 AM, Neil Van Dyke wrote: Scheme is usually a liability when someone used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP). Sad. Thanks for the idea. -- Matthias _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
Scheme is usually a liability when someone used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP). Small anecdote: I had gone a small presentation at WPI about teaching alternative concurrent programming models to undergraduates. The presenter wanted to explore teaching with channels and actors. They chose Google Go as the language to explore those models. I raised the question in the after-session: why not use Racket? The presenter responded with some shock: he had no idea Racket supported threads or had channels. The presenter had gone through a HtDP class, and was convinced that BSL was all that Racket was about. So I don't necessarily agree that it's only the non-HtDP students who have a distorted understanding. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
On Apr 29, 2011, at 12:38 PM, Danny Yoo wrote: Scheme is usually a liability when someone used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP). Small anecdote: I had gone a small presentation at WPI about teaching alternative concurrent programming models to undergraduates. The presenter wanted to explore teaching with channels and actors. They chose Google Go as the language to explore those models. I raised the question in the after-session: why not use Racket? The presenter responded with some shock: he had no idea Racket supported threads or had channels. The presenter had gone through a HtDP class, and was convinced that BSL was all that Racket was about. So I don't necessarily agree that it's only the non-HtDP students who have a distorted understanding. I am aware of that. That's distinct from why I said 'sad'. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
8 minutes ago, Danny Yoo wrote: Scheme is usually a liability when someone used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP). Small anecdote: I had gone a small presentation at WPI about teaching alternative concurrent programming models to undergraduates. The presenter wanted to explore teaching with channels and actors. They chose Google Go as the language to explore those models. I raised the question in the after-session: why not use Racket? The presenter responded with some shock: he had no idea Racket supported threads or had channels. This is completely off-topic wrt the original thread, but IMO having these tools in Racket means that you can play with them and contrast various approaches in a better way. One example I show in my class is the sieve way of generating prime numbers -- I do that first in lazy racket: (define nats (cons 1 (map add1 nats))) (define (divides? n m) (zero? (modulo m n))) (define (sift n l) (filter (lambda (x) (not (divides? n x))) l)) (define (sieve l) (cons (first l) (sieve (sift (first l) (rest l) (define primes (sieve (rest nats))) and then I show them a solution that is based on channels which is more or less a direct translation from Rob Pike's talk at google (which is why it relies heavily on state in each thread), and then one more that uses generators. -- #lang racket (define-syntax-rule (bg expr ...) (thread (lambda () expr ...))) (define nats (let ([out (make-channel)]) (define (loop i) (channel-put out i) (loop (add1 i))) (bg (loop 1)) out)) (define (divides? n m) (zero? (modulo m n))) (define (filter pred c) (define out (make-channel)) (define (loop) (let ([x (channel-get c)]) (when (pred x) (channel-put out x)) (loop))) (bg (loop)) out) (define (sift n c) (filter (lambda (x) (not (divides? n x))) c)) (define (sieve c) (define out (make-channel)) (define (loop c) (define first (channel-get c)) (channel-put out first) (loop (sift first c))) (bg (loop c)) out) (define primes (begin (channel-get nats) (sieve nats))) (define (take n c) (if (zero? n) '() (cons (channel-get c) (take (sub1 n) c (take 10 primes) -- -- #lang racket (require racket/generator) (define nats (generator () (letrec ([loop (lambda (i) (yield i) (loop (add1 i)))]) (loop 1 (define (divides? n m) (zero? (modulo m n))) (define (filter pred g) (generator () (letrec ([loop (lambda () (let ([x (g)]) (when (pred x) (yield x)) (loop)))]) (loop (define (sift n g) (filter (lambda (x) (not (divides? n x))) g)) (define (sieve g) (define (loop g) (define first (g)) (yield first) (loop (sift first g))) (generator () (loop g))) (define primes (begin (nats) (sieve nats))) (define (take n g) (if (zero? n) '() (cons (g) (take (sub1 n) g (take 10 primes) -- -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
The last chapter of _Picturing Programs_ is entitled Next Steps. It mentions HtDP, HtDP2e, HtDW, HtDC, and a list of advanced Racket topics: the Web server, modules, racket/contract, classes, macros, stand-alone executables, and GUI and graphics libraries. Most of these topics (not to mention futures, promises, threads, and channels) I'm only vaguely familiar with myself, even having used PLT Scheme since 1998. So I'm not surprised that somebody who had gone through a TS! workshop might not even be aware of their existence. (When I'm programming in Racket for myself, I tend to work in ISLL + racket/contract. Why would anyone need more than that? :-) ) Stephen Bloch sbl...@adelphi.edu On Apr 29, 2011, at 12:38 PM, Danny Yoo d...@cs.wpi.edu wrote: Scheme is usually a liability when someone used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP). Small anecdote: I had gone a small presentation at WPI about teaching alternative concurrent programming models to undergraduates. The presenter wanted to explore teaching with channels and actors. They chose Google Go as the language to explore those models. I raised the question in the after-session: why not use Racket? The presenter responded with some shock: he had no idea Racket supported threads or had channels. The presenter had gone through a HtDP class, and was convinced that BSL was all that Racket was about. So I don't necessarily agree that it's only the non-HtDP students who have a distorted understanding. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 8:38 AM, Matthias Felleisen matth...@ccs.neu.edu wrote: 2. Could you point me to a criteria that classify Racket as a 'fringe' language and Clojure as a non-fringe language? This is no criterion, but it is suggestive: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=5q=racket%20-%20tennis%2Cclojuredate=1%2F2008%2040mcmpt=q But to be fair, popularity is a terrible metric: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=porn%2Cfood%2Cwatercmpt=q This page shows the relative popularity of `DrScheme' to `Racket'. https://sites.google.com/site/evalapply/name-change It appears that `Racket' has only recently overtaken `DrScheme' in what people search for. -- ~jrm _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
