Introduction to Racket programming
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
A friendly tutorial introduces Racket, a Lisp dialect for language-oriented programming. It explains why Lisp's code-as-data ideas still matter today.
Background
Racket is a modern descendant of Lisp, one of the oldest programming languages, known for its unique feature of treating code as data. The tutorial highlights Racket's philosophy of building domain-specific languages, which has attracted attention in programming communities. It also notes Racket's use in education and research, as seen in Brown University's introductory CS courses.
How it unfolded
- 1958John McCarthy invents Lisp at MIT, introducing concepts like garbage collection and first-class functions.
- 1975Gerald Sussman and Guy Steele create Scheme, a minimalist Lisp dialect.
- 1995Matthias Felleisen's group creates PLT Scheme, later renamed Racket in 2010.
- recentlyA friendly introduction to Racket is published, sparking discussion on Hacker News and other tech communities.
Who’s saying what
- Support
- The tutorial praises Racket's language-oriented programming, saying it lets you build custom languages quickly.
- Caution
- Some commenters note that learning Lisp requires effort relative to standard, static programming, and preferences are subjective.
Still unverified
The claim that the character Caine in 'The Amazing Digital Circus' is programmed in Lisp is based on a visual Easter egg and is not officially confirmed.