Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

http://blog.racket-lang.org/2014/02/racket-v60.html

by racketlang • 12 years ago

167 75 12 years ago

Oculus• 12 years ago

Racket is my first functional language and its been fun, but is it more of an educational language or is it used in production?

samth7• 12 years ago

It's used in production in a variety of places: Naughty Dog studios, NBCUniversal, Air Force research labs, defense contractors, web developers.

iso8859-12• 12 years ago

Here's a talk on Racket in Naughty Dog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmqbnhHp1c

dobbsbob• 12 years ago

Yandex's PaaS "cocaine" also supports Racket

rits• 12 years ago

Interesting. But looks like a software[1] and not a service[2]. Do Yandex plans to launch a public service on Cocaine?

[1] https://github.com/cocaine/ [2] - http://api.yandex.ru/cocaine/

m0nastic5• 12 years ago

We're using it in production at my job. (In a decent-sized polyglot system also made up of Haskell and Clojure).

There aren't as many libraries available compared to more popular languages, but I haven't yet had too much trouble getting things accomplished. For the above-mentioned languages we're using, I'd put the useful library situation at: Racket-> Haskell-> Clojure in order of least to greatest.

Depending on what you need it to interoperate with, it's totally usable in production environments as it stands.

iso8859-12• 12 years ago

are you counting Java libs? then that ordering comes as no surprise.

oskarth• 12 years ago

How come you are using all three of those languages in production rather than just one of them?

technomancy• 12 years ago

Personally I don't use it for anything server-side, but that doesn't mean it's just for education. I suppose it's an unavoidable misconception given that its most obvious strength is the quality documentation and IDE.

Its built-in image support is much better than anything I've seen in any other language, so I've used it a couple times for writing simulations that need a histogram. It's also much better than Clojure for things that require low memory usage or fast startup time.

616c6• 12 years ago

Their continuation-based web server is neat, if you can handle not complaining about the same thing in the Arc/HN combination everyone does when it is brought up.

http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/

I also recently discovered a web sockets library, but am not good enough at coding Racket to use either yet. I am definitely planning on it.

(And seeing you're handle, just want to thank you for your contributions to Clojure; I can only image what would happen if you got more involved in the Racket community).

gus_massa• 12 years ago

I use Racket in a small (few hundred users) internal site in the university.

whyme• 12 years ago

HN is built using arc which is really just an abstraction layer built with racket (previously mzscheme).

616c6• 12 years ago

Yes, and I am not sure if this was addressing my comment. I believe the Arc implementation here (despite being a language built with Racket) is run with its own implementation of continuations.

I mentioned people complaining because, well, people complain when you get timeouts with your continuation. That is why when you click More at the bottom of the page, you see a URL that looks like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=N5yDJXCzVXXV8kqTp57A7D

I believe this is calling into the continuation space. I could be wrong, however. I am just starting my Scheme journey.

Nonetheless, sometimes continuations do not work well on HN and I see people mention that. It is different way to handle state (Racket calls their Racket server stateless for this reason). I just wanted to point that, even if people will pass judgement from their experience here, it is a cool concept nonetheless.

Also, more experienced people should correct my analysis of HN if I am wrong.

616c6• 12 years ago

This language just keeps getting better and better. I am so glad I bought the Realm of Racket book. Cannot wait to get my Scheme on!

And with ARM this will soon become the only language I need!

minikomi• 12 years ago

Yes, I really love racket. Congratulations to the team!

derengel• 12 years ago

Just want to make note that DrRacket has the best integrated REPL of all the lisps around, its highly underestimated.

bhrgunatha2• 12 years ago

Have you tried SLIME? I'm wondering why you put DrRacket above SLIME.

laichzeit0• 12 years ago

Is SLIME any better than Geiser? I've been using it with Racket and it's pretty good.

http://www.nongnu.org/geiser/

yfefyf• 12 years ago

Congrarulations, the Racket team! It's really a joy to use Racket. Racket is elegant, powerful and fast. Everybody should try it. It's extremely easy to install and setup. And whenever you have any question, a fantastic community is there waiting for you.

EastCoastLA• 12 years ago

How is whalesong coming along? Anyone using it for production apps.

codygman2• 12 years ago

What is whalesong? Do you have a link?

klibertp• 12 years ago

Racket to JS compiler by Danny Yoo. http://hashcollision.org/whalesong/

gexla• 12 years ago

Is Racket good for learning Lisp/Scheme or is it better to start with something else?

groovy2shoes• 12 years ago

I learned with Racket, and I found it to be a great experience. It comes with an IDE, DrRacket, that makes it very comfortable to start experimenting. It's also "batteries-included", with libraries for GUI, graphics, networking, etc. It also comes with really good documentation (at least as good as Python's, I'd say, and better than either Perl's or Ruby's).

Racket has a good foothold in educational environments, so it's no coincidence that it's conducive to learning. However, Racket also sees a lot of usage in the PL research space, so it's also conducive to just experimenting. Those two combined can make it a very fun environment.

There's also #racket on freenode, which I've found rather welcoming.

jonnybgood• 12 years ago

Absolutely. However, if you want to learn modern concepts and/or their implementation in a lisp, I would say Clojure is a better bet.

6cxs2hd6• 12 years ago

I don't really agree with that. Although Clojure has many great things, for example its out-of-box immutable data structures, I wouldn't say that it's "more modern" than Racket.

If anything, lately Clojure has been drawing on Racket for inspiration in many areas (for example Typed Racket).

In fact, if you wanted to find a criticism of Racket, it might be that occasionally it is "too" modern -- in the sense that some parts are implementations of research papers. You might encounter the occasional module whose documentation isn't much more than "Implements foobars in the sense of Researcher [Year] <link to paywall paper>". To be clear, that is not 98% of Racket. I mention it just to counter the idea that Racket is "less modern". It's constantly evolving with new things.

Finally, for someone getting started with a lisp, Racket is (a) download, (b) install, (c) start coding and running -- within literally 5 minutes. (Of course experienced people aren't limited to DrRacket if they prefer Emacs or Vim or whatever.)

brudgers6• 12 years ago

If you are interested in learning a LISP, then Racket makes a lot of sense. It is actively being developed and extended and because of its roots in academia extensions tend to be address interesting problems- many arise out of computer science research by professors and grad students.

On the other hand, if you want to learn Scheme by working through SICP, then I would recommend MIT Scheme to avoid impedance. There's not much benefit from using the Racket ecosystem for that. Likewise, if the goal is to work through On LISP then a common Lisp implementation makes sense.

Of course there's no reason not to have all those languages installed..or at least that's what I tell myself.

My last advice is that Racket is an ecosystem. It provides many languages including Algol and Datalog and Scribble and Typed Racket. This makes for a lot of documentation and it is uneven. The guide will be too shallow and the reference will be more boilerplate rather than providing deeper explanation and further examples.

kenferry• 12 years ago

I've been working through SICP, and as far as I can tell Dr. Racket is actually the best way to do that. You just need to use Neil Van Dyke's SICP package for Racket. http://www.neilvandyke.org/racket-sicp/

616c6• 12 years ago

FYI, brudgers makes good points, but the beauty of Racket is they have subsets and supersets of languages, from an Algol implementation to a specialized language built for studying SICP. Neil van Dyke and some other Racketeers built it. I think it might be in need of a maintainer, but here it is nonetheless.

http://www.neilvandyke.org/racket-sicp/

Also keep in mind there is a different subset language designed by one of the developer/professors for his own book based upon his improvements to the SICP methodology, entitled How to Design Programs, as explained in his paper.

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/racket/pubs/fdpe2002-fffk.pdf

The second edition is available as HTML pages amongst the URLS below.

http://docs.racket-lang.org/teachpack/2htdpuniverse.html

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/

Crito• 12 years ago

It has admittedly been several years, but I distinctly remember MIT Scheme being an utter pain in the ass to get built. I'd recommend Racket for people just getting off the ground for that reason alone.

pavelludiq2• 12 years ago

All the major lisp dialects are rather different and encourage different styles. My own opinion is that no one is a better first lisp, as long as you check out the others eventually. Racket is an excellent start. I always advise people interested in lisp to check out racket, clojure and Common Lisp in whatever order they wish. I started with scheme in 2008, moved to clojure in 2009 and I've been a happy Common lisper since 2010/11. Depending on your own style as a programmer you might choose a different main dialect you like best, but only after you try them all :)

Happy Lisping!

saurabhnanda• 12 years ago

Anyone used Racket AND clojure in production? Any first hand experiences? We're looking to add another language/environment to our, currently RoR+Postgres stack, and have a soft corner for lisps.

pavpanchekha• 12 years ago

I'm using Racket for a major project right now. It's been hit and miss. On the one hand, Racket is by far the best alternative/non-mainstream language—the docs are good, there are surprisingly broad libraries, and of course it's great to support the good people at Northeastern.

On the other hand, there is evidence here and there that this language isn't commonly used in production. For example, the pattern-matcher is very well-implemented and feature-full, but there's no way to use it programmatically nor is there a way to get the set of bindings. There is also the sad fact that Racket is a Scheme in the traditional Scheme fashion, and so is still trapped in an 80s design aesthetic. Generics are poor, ADTs aren't easily implemented, static types exist but are not so widely used and have strangenesses.

noelwelsh• 12 years ago

"no way to use it programmatically nor is there a way to get the set of bindings"

These don't really make sense in the context of Racket. Pattern matching is a macro and thus doesn't exist at run time, though of course with eval the distinction between run time and expansion time is not so well defined. Accessing the lexical environment is not something you do in Racket -- it breaks optimisations and is generally considered a bad idea.

samth7• 12 years ago

What do you mean by "use it programmatically" for pattern matching? Can you give an example of a language that has this feature?

makmanalp5• 12 years ago

I like that the docs look less like they jumped out of the geocities era. Still could go a long way though. Signalling is important, and if you signal "old and unupdated" to your users, that's not a great start. (e.g.: http://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/Package_Concepts.html)

"prev", "next" (when the table of content is right there next to it) and "top" (usually the header / logo link these days) and collapsible TOC trees screams "we copied this out of MSDN '97 and windows .chm files".

The "...search files..." looks like it was written by a programmer. The white on gray line with the black on white line next to it looks odd. Natural spacing sometimes is a great substitute for lines.

The main docs page (http://docs.racket-lang.org/) contains way too many fonts and way too many colors. Pick a scheme and go with it.

My favourite examples of docs that look like people cared:

http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/quickstart/ (well designed, tasteful font, color and spacing selection)

http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/getting-started/index.html (lack of search bugs me)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:nth-child ("hide sidebar" here serves a real purpose: hides the whole thing so the doc display is wider, kinda nice that TOC follows you)

Conclusion: Glad it's improving, but please keep at it! Great docs make your product a joy to use!

-------------------------

edit: let me add some WORSE examples to put things into perspective:

https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.6/TdbcCmd/tdbc.htm

http://junit.sourceforge.net/javadoc/ (ughhhh)

http://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/manual/ (whenever I see the gendocs selection page I get nostalgic. Really? 120 vs 420kb? I didn't care even when I was using dialup. Also the "one webpage per node" version almost always sucks because you can't search for anything. And the "all in one page" version sucks because it's too huge sometimes. Who uses the ascii text version or the info docs version?)

tekacs• 12 years ago

I think you have a valid point (other than in the case of the Vagrant docs, which I absolutely detest [0]).

The simplest way to make good-looking docs might just be to 'just use Sphinx' (as does Flask, mentioned and http://docs.python.org/ and [many others][1].

Another example of amazing docs (they've always been pretty decent, but amazing in their most recent style) are the PHP docs: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.pg-affected-rows.php

The docs are a necessity to make up for the shoddy, inconsistent patchwork that is their language design, but they are damned well designed and easy-to-use for the wading through flat scope that is required by those who use the language.

Similarly, styles based on YARD/codo (http://coffeedoc.info/github/coffeedoc/codo/master/) are pretty nice for API references.

[0]: Disappearing sidebar when you resize to narrow, huge amounts of spacing everywhere and sidebar names that can't be expanded without navigating to their root. :/

[1] http://sphinx-doc.org/examples.html

makmanalp5• 12 years ago

Ooooh the PHP ones are even better than they used to be, I hadn't checked in a while. I have always loved the user comments in docs idea. I've noticed so many bugs, gotchas and idiomatic patterns simply by looking at those comments. I bet it gives the devs a good idea on what to work on next, too. It didn't used to have votes which was bad because it perpetuated bad advice sometimes, but now it seems they have that too!

userbinator• 12 years ago

http://junit.sourceforge.net/javadoc/ (ughhhh)

Despite me not really liking Java all that much, the javadocs can be very useful; although in that example they chose a bad non-default colour - black on (dark) green is difficult to read.

Here's a better example, they normally look more like this: http://www.jdom.org/docs/apidocs/

taeric• 12 years ago

I disagree with your examples. Taste is an odd thing that way.

Specifically, previous/next are great if you are reading it straight through. I agree this isn't that likely, but is nice to have. (I have actually used these. Recently, even.)

The fonts and colors are mostly pleasant. I can see how you would like other schemes. But I can't find anything atrocious.

I love how linked everything is. Specifically in the code samples. Even in the intro[1], all code samples are linked to the docs for what is there. Contrast this with the flask documentation, where if I want to see what @app.route does, I have to go find it elsewhere.

So, yes. There are things I would find to complain about if asked to look for them. At no point in actually perusing and using the site have these ever bothered me. And there are more niceties thrown in there that have made things easier than any of the complaints you mentioned.

[1] http://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/intro.html

brudgers6• 12 years ago

When Racketeers talk about documentation, they're not talking about the sort of documentation that you are holding out as better. They're not talking CSS and markup and formatting. No.

When Racketeers talk about documentation, they are speaking in Lisp and the context is code as data and data as code. When Racketeers talk about documentation they are talking about Scribble.

http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/index.html

Scribble is Racket's documentation tool. It adds an independent documentation phase to the Lisp expansion. Here is Mathew Flatt introducing it:

http://vimeo.com/6630691

None of the examples even comes close. The closest thing is EMACS Org.mode, but it is still ad hoc to whatever language one is documenting.

makmanalp5• 12 years ago

My critique was more on the visual side of things. I think it matters. That said, onto your comment:

I liked the presentation. The @ notation is kinda neat and elegant, and no doubt enabled by the ridiculous power macros give you in terms of modifying how everything is parsed. It's cool that it's implemented as a DrScheme lang, and it can run and is all code-is-data-y, and it's not a totally separate language. However, I don't really see anything in here that any modern document processor (say http://sphinx-doc.org/) can't perform.

The second-last question brings up a great point that when you tightly couple your documentation language with the platform (PLT), you run the risk of it being a PITA to use it to document other languages. I think the presenter's solution of automatically creating stub classes and such is really unsatisfactory and kinda kills the benefits.

So there you have it, there are pluses and minuses. I think Scribble is neat, but it's really not all that out of the ordinary.. It's definitely not true that "nothing comes close".

samth7• 12 years ago

I think we just disagree on taste for documentation pages. For example, I find the Vagrant docs somewhat garish and hard to read.

The current look of the Racket documentation was designed by Matthew Butterick. You can see his excellent book on typography and design here: http://practicaltypography.com/ -- and it was made with Scribble, the same system that generates Racket's documentation.

sigzero• 12 years ago

The package ecosystem has expanded. I like that.

http://docs.racket-lang.org/pkg/getting-started.html#%28part...

turtle4• 12 years ago

Having used clojure for a few things recently, I am interested in picking up a non-jvm lisp. It seems like Racket and Chicken Scheme are both well recommended. Anyone reading this have experience with both / insights as to why I might want to select one vs the other?

Racket 6.0: New package system, new doc CSS, JIT support for ARM

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