racket VS cl-cookbook

Racket—the Language-Oriented Programming Language—version 8.12 is now available from https://racket-lang.org

See https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-12-is-now-availab... for the release announcement and highlights.

Thank you to the many people who contributed to this release!

Feedback Welcome

Racket version 8.11.1 is now available from https://racket-lang.org/

Racket (https://racket-lang.org) has an IDE (DrRacket) which isn't EMACS. ARC (which powers hacker news) is (was?) written in Racket.

Nice! Repeating a comment I just made on HN: I signed up for RacketCon, will be joining remotely. I am looking forward to it a lot. Usually I use the Racket language perhaps for 10% of my personal projects, but I am currently writing a Racket AI book, so all things Racket are of current interest. Past RacketCons have been a lot of fun. I usually use Common Lisp, but Racket is batteries included Scheme, and more, and is a very pleasant language and ecosystem. Just in case you don’t have Racket installed: https://racket-lang.org/

I signed up for RacketCon, joining remotely. I am looking forward to it a lot. Usually I use the Racket language perhaps for 10% of my personal projects, but I am currently writing a Racket AI book, so all things Racket are of current interest.

Past RacketCons have been a lot of fun.

I usually use Common Lisp, but Racket is batteries included Scheme, and more, and is a very pleasant language and ecosystem. Just in case you don’t have Racket installed: https://racket-lang.org/

I'd suggest Racket (https://racket-lang.org) which is a batteries-included language environment that includes scheme and has a lot of high-quality documentation.

Guile (https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/) isn't quite as learner-focused but is another great choice.

How did I get to the bottom of the page and not ONE person has recommended racket?

The Racket fork of CS supports Apple Silicon natively, and can be installed independently: https://github.com/racket/racket/blob/master/racket/src/ChezScheme/BUILDING Chez adds a few features (threads, ffi, ...) to R6RS; there is a useful combined index to TSPL4 and the CS User Guide at http://cisco.github.io/ChezScheme/csug9.5/csug_1.html

If you're using SICP in Scheme (or are you doing the JS version?) then you may want to look at How to Design Programs. It uses Racket which is a Scheme descendent so much of the language you've learned in SICP will work in it without issue. It also has a pretty good set of GUI and drawing capabilities you can find through the Racket docs page and will use some of with HTDP.

> the problem with Lisp is that it's sorta bundled with Emacs

What's the problems with Alive, SLT, Slyblime, and Vlime? I mean, I use Emacs, but I was using Emacs before getting into Scheme and CL anyway.

> Every website that teaches Lisp is in ugly HTML+CSS-only style

I dunno, I feel like the Community Spec (<https://cl-community-spec.github.io/pages/index.html>) and the Cookbook (<https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/>) are fine.

> I like the philosophy of (s-exp) but modern lisps have ruined its simplicity for me by introducing additional bracket notations [like this].

Yes, that additional notation is a terrible blight on the perfection that is S-expressions, I wholeheartedly agree.

check out the editor section, there's more than Emacs these days: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht...

- https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl for libraries

- https://www.classcentral.com/report/best-lisp-courses/#ancho...

- a recent overview of the ecosystem: https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/these-years-in-common-li... (shameless plug, on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321090)

Q4: the Cookbook should get you straight to the point: build a website, web scraper, DB access, reference of data structures… https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/

It's a good book!

Modern companions would be:

- the Cookbook: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ (check out the editors section: Atom/Pulsar, VSCode, Sublime, Jetbrains, Lem...)

- https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl to find libraries

Also:

- https://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common-lisp/

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321090 2022 in review

https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp -- this one is great, and the first thing I recommend

https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ -- also great and up to date

https://awesome-cl.com/ -- for anything else.

Little help to boost your videos: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ look at the banner. Cheers.

For more beginner-friendly, I suggest P. Siebels Practical Common Lisp or The CL Cookbook. Both of those should be available in Emacs info format! If authors are lurking in here :-)

the code snippet used for the example is here: https://github.com/LispCookbook/cl-cookbook/pull/472