I have approached Racket mainly from a computational perspective (physics and math), and I've found parentheses so far _not_ much of a distraction or annoyance. Actually, as far as the parens reduce the amount of syntactical complexity, I am in favour of them (compared to the nasty syntactical vexes in C++, or probably all Algol-descendents). I also like the language-oriented-programming philosophy of Racket which makes syntax of secondary importance. I think it is better to reduce the amount of parens needed, rather than to eliminate them altogether in favour of an Algol-like syntax. Racket2 might have even two possible syntaxes (Lisp and Algol like), but I think syntactical patterns should _not_ be the first priority of Racket2.
I think the most important task is to nurture the ecosystem of Racket: A well-defined performant 'standard library' to be used in real-world large-scale practical systems with high complexity (including tough computations, concurrency, asynchronicity, etc.) in a safe, and proveably correct manner. An expressive static typing is also one of my wishes, so that a 'refined' Typed Racket becomes part of the standard; in this case, one may learn from languages like Idris. Easy interoperability is very important at this stage (eg. with Python). Having an LLVM backend is also very promising (unlike JVM) as Thomas Dickerson mentioned. In general, due to my FORTRAN and C++ background, I am always very concerned about performance, and looking forward to the Racket-on-Chez project. Lastly, perhaps Racket2 deserves a lucid Lispish name (a bit fancier than 'Racket'). -- 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/e34ca730-1faa-49a7-b5df-679251be6ba7%40googlegroups.com.
