I don't know --- sometimes I think Racket is the less popular Lisp in
here. When you guys look at libraries like syntax-parse, don't you feel
like switching to Racket for good?

Some other day someone said --- why isn't Racket a thinner layer on top
of POSIX? Maybe that's one of the reasons?

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On 2024-01-04, Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> wrote:

I don't know --- sometimes I think Racket is the less popular Lisp in
here. When you guys look at libraries like syntax-parse, don't you feel
like switching to Racket for good?

Some other day someone said --- why isn't Racket a thinner layer on top
of POSIX? Maybe that's one of the reasons?

I don't have much interest in Racket because I made myself something
called TXR Lisp. That /is/ actually a thinner layer on top of POSIX.
It is spiritually connected to CL more than anything else.

To fool C and Unix people, I pitched this language as a command line
tool similar to Awk and what have you, and made sure it is documented by nothing but a single man page. The one thing that gives the ruse is
that the man page grew to over 950 pages (in PDF form).

About Racket, a Common Lisp vs. Racket article from 2022 recently
appeared on HackerNews:

https://gist.github.com/vindarel/c1ef5e043773921e3b11d8f4fe1ca7ac

The author argues that Racket is substantially less dynamic.

If he is right, that could be something that turns away Common Lisp
people.

However, note that this newsgroup has always been Common-Lisp-oriented,
even though it's not comp.lang.lisp.common or comp.lang.comon-lisp.

Discussions of other Lisps are not off topic, but just don't happen.

It doesn't speak to anything other than what this newsgroup is.

--
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
Mastodon: @Kazinator@mstdn.ca
NOTE: If you use Google Groups, I don't see you, unless you're whitelisted.

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Kaz Kylheku <433-929-6894@kylheku.com> writes:

On 2024-01-04, Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> wrote:

I don't know --- sometimes I think Racket is the less popular Lisp in
here. When you guys look at libraries like syntax-parse, don't you feel
like switching to Racket for good?

Some other day someone said --- why isn't Racket a thinner layer on top
of POSIX? Maybe that's one of the reasons?

I don't have much interest in Racket because I made myself something
called TXR Lisp. That /is/ actually a thinner layer on top of POSIX.
It is spiritually connected to CL more than anything else.

To fool C and Unix people, I pitched this language as a command line
tool similar to Awk and what have you, and made sure it is documented by nothing but a single man page. The one thing that gives the ruse is
that the man page grew to over 950 pages (in PDF form).

Is TXR able to use all libraries from CL?

About Racket, a Common Lisp vs. Racket article from 2022 recently
appeared on HackerNews:

https://gist.github.com/vindarel/c1ef5e043773921e3b11d8f4fe1ca7ac

The author argues that Racket is substantially less dynamic.

If he is right, that could be something that turns away Common Lisp
people.

Interesting.

However, note that this newsgroup has always been Common-Lisp-oriented,
even though it's not comp.lang.lisp.common or comp.lang.comon-lisp.

Discussions of other Lisps are not off topic, but just don't happen.

It doesn't speak to anything other than what this newsgroup is.

What about Guile? What do you specifically think of Guile?

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Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> writes:

I don't know --- sometimes I think Racket is the less popular Lisp in
here.

Well technically since Racket is a member of the Scheme family, you
should probably be using comp.lang.scheme for talking about it. Many
years ago that would have definitely been correct since comp.lang.scheme
was gatewayed to an active Scheme mailing list. But the Scheme mailing
list has been dead for years, and comp.lang.scheme now gets almost no
traffic other than announcements.

But there was never a Common-Lisp-only newsgroup, so the Common Lisp
folks gathered here. The Scheme folks went to comp.lang.scheme, and the
Emacs Lisp folks went someplace I no longer remember.

I suppose that these days if you're weird enough to be using both Usenet
_and_ and some flavor of Lisp, you're in such sufficiently small company
that you might as well come here.

Aren't the cool kids all off using some social media web site to talk
about Racket?

- Alan

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Alan Bawden <alan@csail.mit.edu> writes:

Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> writes:

I don't know --- sometimes I think Racket is the less popular Lisp in
here.

Well technically since Racket is a member of the Scheme family, you
should probably be using comp.lang.scheme for talking about it. Many
years ago that would have definitely been correct since comp.lang.scheme
was gatewayed to an active Scheme mailing list. But the Scheme mailing
list has been dead for years, and comp.lang.scheme now gets almost no
traffic other than announcements.

That's sad. Perhaps I'm going to be weird enough to learn some CL.

But there was never a Common-Lisp-only newsgroup, so the Common Lisp
folks gathered here. The Scheme folks went to comp.lang.scheme, and the Emacs Lisp folks went someplace I no longer remember.

I'd suspect they went to the GNU mailing lists such as

https://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs

which I thought it used to be mirrored on USENET's gnu.emacs.help, but
that's history too because I don't see any more traffic there --- sadly.

I suppose that these days if you're weird enough to be using both Usenet _and_ and some flavor of Lisp, you're in such sufficiently small company
that you might as well come here.

Lol! I am weird enough.

Aren't the cool kids all off using some social media web site to talk
about Racket?

They are. They shutdown the racket-users mailing list, went to

https://racket.discourse.group/

as well as to a Discord thingie. Somehow I can't get along with their discussion media. It's hard for me to understand how technical people
can discuss much of anything in systems like Discord.

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On 2024-01-04, Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> wrote:

Is TXR able to use all libraries from CL?

None. It's possible to port some things, but it requires work.

I ported only one: CL-WHO, which is named TL-WHO:

https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/tl-who/about/

It was interesting.

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On Wed, 03 Jan 2024 21:10:56 -0300
Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> wrote:

Some other day someone said --- why isn't Racket a thinner layer on
top of POSIX? Maybe that's one of the reasons?

I can only speak for myself. I don't switch to Racket because Common
Lisp does all I want, its ecosystem has a critical mass for my needs, I
feel at ease and productive with the language, and it provides a
stability and maturity I value.

That said, I do use also another Lisp, Interlisp, as I love its
rich environment (which also supports an early Common Lisp
implementation) and history.

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Kaz Kylheku <433-929-6894@kylheku.com> writes:

On 2024-01-04, Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> wrote:

Is TXR able to use all libraries from CL?

None. It's possible to port some things, but it requires work.

I ported only one: CL-WHO, which is named TL-WHO:

https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/tl-who/about/

It was interesting.

Speaking of your home page, your friend Rachel seems to have taken her
domain beinglulu.ca down.

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On Wed, 03 Jan 2024 21:10:56 -0300, Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org>
wrote:

I don't know --- sometimes I think Racket is the less popular Lisp in
here. When you guys look at libraries like syntax-parse, don't you feel
like switching to Racket for good?

Racket is in the Lisp family, but Racket is NOT Lisp. At best it is a
distant cousin.

Racket is derived from Scheme (which also is NOT Lisp). Racket looks
a lot like Scheme, but it has some unique and different semantics.

Some other day someone said --- why isn't Racket a thinner layer on top
of POSIX? Maybe that's one of the reasons?

No. Racket evolved from PLT Scheme - which WAS a Scheme. Scheme
predates POSIX, and its functions and semantics were codified in ISO
and ANSI standards and thus had to be preserved.


Racket, though, is no longer a Scheme. Instead it aims to be a mostly
generic programming platform - a virtual machine, optimized for
functional languages, upon which many different languages can be
implemented. In that way it is more like JVM and CLR (dotNET) than
like most Lisp or Scheme implementations. Like JVM and CLR, any
languages that run on the Racket VM can communicate and interoperate
with each other. In contrast to JVM and CLR, Racket also provides a (relatively) simple development toolchain and useful libraries to
enable developers to create new languages to run on its virtual
machine.

A number of such languages come with the Racket distribution:

- Racket the language (distinct from Racket the VM)
- Typed Racket (strongly typed with inference)
- Lazy Racket
- R5RS Scheme
- R6RS Scheme
- FrTime (declaritive, event based)
- Algol60
- Datalog (Prolog like logic)

Note that Algol60 and Datalog have non-sexpr syntax. Racket includes
parser construction libraries (and 3rd party libraries also can be
used) so a new language designed for the Racket VM can have any
desired syntax and is not limited to parenthetical lists.

The Racket team is working on a new language - tentatively called
"Rhombus" - that will have a conventional (Python like) syntax, but
will still have all the power of the (sexpr-based) Racket language.
When it is complete, it will join the lineup of languages provided
with the virtual machine.

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On Thu, 04 Jan 2024 21:28:14 -0500, George Neuner wrote:

Racket is derived from Scheme (which also is NOT Lisp).

There is the distinction between “Lisp2” (including Common Lisp and other traditional LISPs) and “Lisp1” (typified by Scheme). I take it Racket is a “Lisp1”-type language?

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On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 21:47:37 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 04 Jan 2024 21:28:14 -0500, George Neuner wrote:

Racket is derived from Scheme (which also is NOT Lisp).

There is the distinction between “Lisp2” (including Common Lisp and other >traditional LISPs) and “Lisp1” (typified by Scheme). I take it Racket is a >“Lisp1”-type language?

Yes. It's been called "Scheme with batteries included".
But there really are quite a few differences wrt Scheme.

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