Beautiful Racket

https://www.beautifulracket.com/

by tosh • 8 years ago

287 53 8 years ago

ketralnis• 8 years ago

I really like this book and highly recommend it.

My only complaint is that because it is so directed (you're writing a programming language and it wants to get you there very quickly) it abstracts a lot of stuff that you'll need to know if you're doing anything other than following this book. For instance, a lot of the code you write will start with

    #lang br

Instead of the usual Racket

    #lang racket

That's using some support from Racket where you say "I'm writing the `br` language" and Racket goes and runs your code in that language instead of Racket. That "language" is really just Racket with some libraries pre-included (https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/from-br-to-racket-base....) and some of those libraries are specific to the book (e.g. https://docs.racket-lang.org/br/index.html?q=br#%28mod-path....).

So if you're following along the book, the upside is that that he can skip explaining a bunch of stuff about Racket packaging and libraries. But the downside is that he skips explaining a bunch of stuff about Racket packaging and libraries. If you want to take what you've learnt here and go write a programming language in Racket, you're going to have to go and learn all of that stuff anyway. You're going to have to take apart `br` and figure out how to map its parsing stuff to Racket's and you'll find that almost none of the scaffolding from the book can be copy-pasted without including the book's libraries, and many of the concepts aren't even reuseable if you want to use Racket's parsing tools instead of the book's largely bespoke tools. (Just including the book's libraries themselves can be difficult because of how Racket's packaging works. In the New World of Racket packaging, you install a library _on your machine_, not as a dependency of your project. So if you want to run your code on another machine, you first have to manually install the library on that machine before your code can run, and Racket's tooling around this is currently very sub-par.)

But I'll say again that it's a great book and if you're interested in Lisp and Scheme in particular, you should buy it and you should read it. It's great. Just know that you'll have to read the book _and also learn Racket_.

threatofrain• 8 years ago

On the matter of learning Racket, I've heard some good things about How to Design Programs (2nd Edition): http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/index.html.

wikibob• 8 years ago

The approach in this book is one of if not the best in computer science pedagogy.

This book specifically is in need of significant editing.

As an alternative, see the incredibly good “How To Code” class from UBCx on EdX (don’t be put off by the title). It’s a direct implementation of the approach in this book.

klibertp• 8 years ago

I'd say HtDP is a good book for learning programming, but I don't think it's the best introduction to Racket. It also uses a specially crafted languages (a series of them) and focuses on the process of coming up and implementing the design, while removing most of the usual problems (cryptic error messages, too complex docs, too advanced techniques) which the beginners encounter. It's great as an introduction to programming, and it's even worthwhile a quick read for more experienced programmers (esp. self-taught), but it's definitely not about learning Racket, at all. The Little Schemer may be slightly better, but on its own, it too is not about learning Racket. Actually, I guess there's no book about Racket itself (EDIT: other than this one to some extent (in "explainers")) - existing books either focus on the basics of programming (HtDP, Realm of Racket) or on specific algorithmic problems and techniques (The X Schemer, SICP). Which is kind of natural given the educational background, but it makes it harder for already established programmers to learn Racket to get the job done.

baldfat3• 8 years ago

BEST BOOK EVER

Most dense book ever

Took my 30 restarts to get through it. This is my way of doing programming books: Read till I get stuck or feel unconfident in what I learned. Restart at page 1 and I ALWAYS get through where I was stuck. Get stuck go back to page one, rinse and repeat.....

Seriously I am an old fart that read a book to learn Assembly for C64 when I was 11. I have never had something fundamentally change the way I do anything. I mostly write R and my R writing style is night and day different and I could use the Scheme parts of it.

Highly recommended.

Secondly, go through Realms fo Racket with a kid (I did with my 10-year-old daughter). Teaching is the best way to learn.http://www.realmofracket.com/

magpi3• 8 years ago

If you want to take what you've learnt here and go write a programming language in Racket, you're going to have to go and learn all of that stuff anyway.

Why? The book is not about how to program and build languages in racket. It is about how to program and build languages in beautiful racket (br). Learning how br was written is a good exercise for the reader, but it's not necessary to effectively use br

bdowling• 8 years ago

The title of the book is “Beautiful Racket: How to Make Your Own Programming Langauges with Racket”. It’s reasonable to expect that a reader unaware of the distinction would get the impression they’re learning about Racket.

jjwiseman• 8 years ago

I've been doing full-time Racket for the past few months, and my experiences echo some of what you said, even for general purpose programming.

Initially I loved the support for multiple languages via #lang, but in practice it's not as easily composable as I would like (e.g. there's no way to combine multiple languages in a single file), and it sometimes tends to hide an API that I'd like to use behind #lang magic (priority sometimes, but not always seems to be given to documenting the use of a language via #lang vs. using its API).

The lack of an ability to install a library locally, along the lines of npm or virtualenv, was a surprise. Especially combined with the approach to packaging versioning: There is no versioning. When a package is updated, everyone gets the new version and there's no way to ask for an older version:

  10.5 How can I specify which version of a package I depend on if its interface has changed and I need an old version?

  In such a situation, the author of the package has released a backwards incompatible edition of a package.
  The package manager provides no help to deal with this situation (other than, of course, not installing the
  “update”). Therefore, package authors should not make backwards incompatible changes to packages. Instead,
  they should release a new package with a new name. For example, package libgtk might become libgtk2. These
  packages should be designed to not conflict with each other, as well.

I like Racket. But there are enough small things (like these, and a few others, like e.g. not getting stack traces on errors in the unit test runner) that I would probably choose Clojure for my next Lisp-appropriate project.

soegaard• 8 years ago

Regarding multiple languages in the same file. Check out: http://docs.racket-lang.org/multi-file-lang/index.html

weberc2• 8 years ago

Looks like it's being hugged to death.

laCour• 8 years ago

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20180509201622/https://beautiful...

_hardwaregeek• 8 years ago

Practical Typography (written by the same author) has been a wonderful resource for me. Sometime I'll get around to working through this book as well. My high school is actually one of the last places to teach Racket/Scheme as an introductory language. Personally I find it a wonderful way of teaching the basics of computation and recursion. I wish more schools still taught it.

rachitnigam• 8 years ago

Several universities still teach racket as an intro language. Ex: Brown, Northeastern, Northwestern, etc.

The authors of Racket specially avoid arguments about teaching language X in introductory CS. The pedagogy and curriculum are significantly more factors in effectively teaching CS [1]. The design of Racket with its restricted languages reflects that.

[1] https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/curriculum-design/

adjkant2• 8 years ago

This is an essay by the creator/author of How To Design Programs (currently at Northeastern) that lays out the pedagogy well:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Developing_Dev...

The speaker in the talk linked is a previous Ph.D. student of the author above.

Northeastern, Brown, Northwestern, and Waterloo all use the approach in HTDP as far as I'm aware, even if they don't use the book itself. Racket just happens to be the language of choice (or rather X Student Languages are, not even Racket) because they fit the pedagogy well.

finolex1• 8 years ago

Yale's intro CS class uses Racket: https://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs201/

lightedman• 8 years ago

"Practical Typography (written by the same author) has been a wonderful resource for me."

Yet his webpage fonts give me an absolute headache.

That doesn't give me a good gut feeling about "Beautiful Racket."

bgorman• 8 years ago

This is a very interesting case where the author claims the book is not free, provides it on a public webpage, and does not want to provide a PDF or ePub. I would gladly be willing to pay for content, but I like to do most of my reading on a kindle. I am not willing to pay for a book if the author is trying to make it as difficult as possible to view his book (but at least the fonts are beautiful).

phren0logy• 8 years ago

Part of the justification (which you may or may not buy) is that it's not intended to be viewed as static content. Therefore, a PDF or eBook is not an appropriate medium.

criddell3• 8 years ago

That makes sense to me but then I think the book needs a track changes feature. It might be there, but the site was loading slowly enough that I didn't really explore.

criddell3• 8 years ago

Your Kindle has rudimentary web browser, you might be able to read it there.

chipotle_coyote3• 8 years ago

Butterick has Strong Opinions™ about Kindle typography that led him to that position. I largely share those opinions, to be fair, although I think it's a bit of a quixotic enterprise for many books; offline is more important than beauty. (And, really, the Kindle could do most of these tricks if Amazon gave a rat's ass; Apple's iBooks can do nearly everything that any other WebKit browser can with regards to typography.)

Having said that, though, this is a book that I'd argue is better in the browser than on the Kindle or as a PDF. I want to be able to read this with a code editor open, and the book side-by-side in a separate window. PDF books don't reflow, and in my experience Kindle just isn't particularly good for tech books.

timClicks• 8 years ago

eBook reader typography - my experience is drawn from using a Kobo with various EPUB & PDF from multiple publishers - is almost always terrible.

Among other things, code listings tend to be a mess. It's frustrating when technical publishers release digital versions of their works, and the code snippets (for example) turn out to be PNG files. That works great for a PDF intended to be printed on paper, but doesn't scale well to an ebook reader.

e12e• 8 years ago

I want to be able to read this with a code editor open, and the book side-by-side in a separate window.

Like this?

https://xkcd.com/1988/

oofoe• 8 years ago

The biggest problem I have about not getting an offline copy is that he makes it clear that if the book does not perform to his expectations, then he will take it down.

So, even if I pay for this wonderful book (and it /is/ wonderful!) and nobody else/not enough other people do... And then it's gone!

jimmaswell3• 8 years ago

What can any of these specialty devices do that a tablet with some apps can't?

gowld2• 8 years ago

Butterick has Strong Opinions™ about Kindle typography

Apparently so, as the website has a strange skinny/tall hard-to-read font for prose, and another strange hard-to-read font for code.

xfer• 8 years ago

Well, does the author supply a bundled html for download? I don't like paying for things that can vanish any day, you can open a pdf viewer side-by-side a code editor too.

newscracker• 8 years ago

He has strong opinions about typography, period. It's not just about Kindle or any other device or format. I do recall asking about a PDF or ePub version of Practical Typography [1], but he refused saying none of the eBook formats are good enough. While I understand that to some extent for a book on typography, I don't understand it for a book on programming.

[1] https://practicaltypography.com/

xrayspec• 8 years ago

"on a public webpage" = "as difficult as possible"?

Also, author addresses these objections:

https://beautifulracket.com/why-you-should-pay.html

adjkant2• 8 years ago

This is a great introduction to Racket as a language for building languages.

For those interested further, there is a lot of work with Racket in this respect. A recent paper previously hit the front page of HN on "Domain Specific Languages" (DSL's), which is basically the idea that you should write a programming language for each problem to make it easier to write programs in that domain rather than writing complex spaghetti code in a general-purpose language or writing a library that badly ports to the general purpose language. I'm a bit biased here, but I think this could be the next big step in programming in the next few decades as we see people not writing libraries but writing DSL's to make for easy writing of programs.

HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16454854

The authors of the paper are mentioned in the acknowledgments of this book as well!

grimgrin• 8 years ago

Here's a cache of A Programmable Programming Language since it's down for me atm

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ATgZRm...

gergoerdi• 8 years ago

And here's a worked example of applying this approach, in this case to the domain of video editing: Super 8 Languages for Making Movies (Functional Pearl) https://www2.ccs.neu.edu/racket/pubs/icfp17-acf.pdf

verdverm• 8 years ago

re: Programming in DSLs

I'm working on an engine for this https://geb.hofstadter.io

mathinpens• 8 years ago

what a beautiful book.

nanomonkey• 8 years ago

How useful is this book for a Clojure programmer? I always wonder if there is cross-over in practices between the Lisps.

wvlia52• 8 years ago

I have little knowledge of lisps, but I'd like to implement a new language in one of them. What would be a better choice, racket or clojure?

thelibrarian• 8 years ago

One of Racket’s is explicit design goals is to be a toolkit for designing and implementing new languages, so I would say it is the better choice.

wvlia52• 8 years ago

Yes I know, but I've heard some clojurists criticizing racket because of its data structures. So perhaps that would outweigh its benefits. Thanks for your opinion

watersb• 8 years ago

Other fantastic projects by the same author:

“Typography for Lawyers” https://typographyforlawyers.com/

“The Book is a Program” https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/

Beautiful Racket

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