rhombus-brainstorming VS racket

The Racket team has been embarking on the Rhombus project with something they're calling shrubbery notation. The most recent Racket Con (https://con.racket-lang.org/) has several presentations on the topic, and there's a GitHub repo (https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming) tracking discussion. For what it's worth, I strongly dislike the heavy use of : in this notation.

Once you become a skeptic, other warts began to appear such as the culture (1,2) of the language and one of the active academic members putting a lot of effort into changing the syntax. I concluded that I might as well spend my time just learning common lisp as then I might have a tool I could use. Everything is old in common lisp, and I am coming to recognize that as a good thing. Re-inventing the wheel is not always useful, and a few libraries that everyone uses means they probably function and build.

Matthew has been working on a [prototype](https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming/pull/163) that works on the current snapshot version of Racket.

It is possible to use to write some basic things and most existing Racket libraries are usable with the prototype.

It is called rhombus and there is an open discussion going on at https://github.com/racket/rhombus-brainstorming

rhombus-brainstorming

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.