Racketscript

by bwidlar • 4 years ago

167 43 4 years ago

I'm not a huge fan of the scheme style programming languages although pretty standard even in Go templates because the parenthesis end up with ugly syntax that becomes difficult when using multiple levels, but Racket does seem cool. I found their guide on building web apps to be pretty amazing and I think that is what HN uses for their website.

stingraycharles• 4 years ago

the parenthesis end up with ugly syntax that becomes difficult when using multiple levels

This is really something you will get used to very quickly, and dare I say, learn to appreciate.

esjeon4• 4 years ago

learn to appreciate.

I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter.

Also, when writing code, you can spam ")" to close functions/expressions. It takes only few brain cycles if the editor highlights matching parenthesis. This makes it easier to move code around. Copy-paste-))))))...

fredrikholm• 4 years ago

Having some more syntax for things like maps and destructuring (like Clojure) goes a long way to remove the worst offenders (((like these))), but as others have mentioned, you get used to it, and then you miss it in other places.

You are working with shapes of data, not lines of text. Using tools like Paredit you can get into an incredible flow akin to that of Vi/Emacs mastery, with the added layer that you are moving entire blocks rather than single words (that may or may not end up being valid code).

forgotpwd16• 4 years ago

To be more precise it uses Arc that is implemented on Racket. An example of the programming approach Racket provides (https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/why-lop-why-racket.html).

jmercouris• 4 years ago

Reminds me a lot of Parenscript which we use heavily in Nyxt.

Parenscript: https://cliki.net/Parenscript

whateveracct• 4 years ago

JS basically is Scheme, after all.

Hammershaft• 4 years ago

We can only wish javascript was scheme.

https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isn...

bmitc• 4 years ago

I've never understood how someone who supposedly liked, wanted, and had experience with Scheme ended up creating JavaScript, even being rushed to do so. This isn't a personal judgement. It's just that I don't understand it.

bmacho• 4 years ago

tl;dr a list of random things, then stating that this proves that javascript is not basically a scheme. 4/10, effort appreciated.

pjmlp5• 4 years ago

With a sparkling of SELF.

martyalain• 4 years ago

It's said that the father of LISP, John McCarthy, lamented the W3C's choice of SGML as the basis for HTML : « An environment where the markup, styling and scripting is all s-expression based would be nice. » The {lambda way} project could be an answer, small and simple, a minimal enhanced text-editor: http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/

capableweb• 4 years ago

Every lisp (s-expressions really) fan would say most syntaxes/languages would be nicer if they were expressed in s-expressions instead of the c-like aberration most language copy, myself included. I guess McCarthy was simply the first to express that sentiment :)

noelwelsh• 4 years ago

The github page has more information: https://github.com/racketscript/racketscript

And to answer the questions every Schemer will have, no the runtime doesn't yet support tail calls or continuations.

codeflo• 4 years ago

Continuations I can live without, but is Scheme at all usable without tail calls?

neilv• 4 years ago

Not normal idiomatic Scheme, but I suppose some programs might have in-practice stack usage bounded not too high.

A Wasm target of the Chez/Racket compiler might be an easier way to get fast and proper evaluation in Web browsers.

noduerme• 4 years ago

tail calls are a foreign concept to me, and I assume that's because I'm coming from JIT scripts where that's not a common way to think of optimization. Just reading a bit of what they are, it sounds like you're branching within a function to others that return something of the same type - common enough - but get a huge memory/ processing bonus when you branch as long as the sending function doesn't continue? Is that sort of it? I'm really intrigued as to how and where this plays a big role in day to day coding or whether it's just an optimization once you refactor everything at the end.

pjmlp5• 4 years ago

It is one of the few languages where tail calls are part of the language specification, so not really.

cultofmetatron• 4 years ago

its the only way to do loops without blowing your call stack in scheme. technically yes as long as you're not doing anything interesting

feeley• 4 years ago

If you want full Scheme running on top of JS in the browser: https://try.gambitscheme.org

It has tail calls, continuations and even green threads (SRFI 18 compliant), and a decentralized module system that can load libraries directly from github and a JS FFI! See this paper for advanced examples that you can copy-paste to the REPL: http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers/BelangerFeeleyELS...

Racketscript

Related Stories