Racket Survey 2020

[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

We’re taking a survey! We want to better understand the Racket
community, from people who have been contributing for decades to those
who have just joined us, and from seasoned programmers to those just
starting out.

One of our goals is to help bring in new contributors and make it
easier to become a part of the community.

Fill out the survey here: https://forms.gle/XeHdgv8R7o2VjBbF9

Completing the survey should take 10–15 minutes, and is anonymous
(unless you decide to include your name). The survey will be open
until July 31 and we will report on the results sometime after that.

Please help us spread the word by sharing the survey link on your
social network feeds, at conferences, around your office, and in other
communities.

If you have any questions, please let us know at sur...@racket-lang.org.

Stephen De Gabrielle & Sam Tobin-Hochstadt

[Ryan Kramer]

When I open the survey, the questions and answers do not line up. The first two entries have choices without a question, then the third entry has the first question, the fourth entry has the second question, and so on.

(This has probably been reported already, but I'll do it publicly so everyone can see that it has been reported.)

[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but it should be fixed now.

On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 4:37 PM Ryan Kramer <default...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> When I open the survey, the questions and answers do not line up. The first two entries have choices without a question, then the third entry has the first question, the fourth entry has the second question, and so on.
>
> (This has probably been reported already, but I'll do it publicly so everyone can see that it has been reported.)
>
> On Tuesday, June 23, 2020 at 11:22:53 AM UTC-5, samth wrote:
>>

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[Stephen De Gabrielle]

Hi

On Thu, Jun 25, 2020 at 5:34 AM Alex Harsanyi <alexha...@gmail.com> wrote:

I understand that the core Racket team is busy, but they are the only ones who can clarify the criteria for merging a pull request and also only they can review and merge them --

You made me think of the style guide, but when I looked it has a section on contributing PR's that I hadn't seen, read or remembered:

https://docs.racket-lang.org/style/branch-and-commit.html

This will be after i fix MY bad PR ! https://github.com/Metaxal/quickscript-extra/pull/9#discussion_r445376039

Didn't you compile and run the script before submitting? It should tell you there's an error.
When you make a PR (for any Racket project), always do the following:

• raco pkg setup [package]

• raco test [package]

I was caught out! I made a last minute change without testing.

Maybe we could look a expanding https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Propose-a-fix-or-enhancement 

to 

a) reference the style guide: https://docs.racket-lang.org/style/branch-and-commit.html
b) provide a little more detail
 

As for  https://github.com/racket/plot/pull/5 - I'll commit to having a go at reviewing it tomorrow AFTER I fix my bad PR.

Kind regards 

Stephen

(On the laptop in the garden because it is 10:50pm and it is too hot in house.)

--

----

[WarGrey Gyoudmon Ju]

Greetings.

 I am back after a two-year away.

One issue I had forgotten before I submitted the survey is that there seems to be a big gap between Typed Racket and Untyped Racket.

I doubt no one is maintaining the typed APIs in the main-dist, and also no one is really treating typed/racket as one's prominent dialect

except those who work on typed/racket for their own academic things. Once ago I did submit some pull requests for adding missing

typed APIs, later as my codebase totally written in the typed racket grows, sending pull requests becomes a trivial task since I just

submitted for pieces as tiny as I need at those moments.

Also, I feel sad my questions tend to be less noticed.

Anyway, I am glad to share my projects with the community in the future despite the detailed time might not be guaranteed.

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[Stephen De Gabrielle]

Welcome back!

Thank you for taking the time to both do the survey and also your follow-up email. 

I'll admit I'm not currently using typed/racket, but it does get a significant number of issues and questions on the racket slack, so it was my impression that a significant subset of the community is using it.

> Also, I feel sad my questions tend to be less noticed.

My apologies. I think the community recognise this as an issue and I'm hoping the survey will help inform plans to improve the situation.

There has been a significant move of general q&a activity away from the mailing lists to the Racket Slack. This is not surprising as communities do change over time and many Open source language communities have moved some or all of their activity to chat systems.

I'm hoping we can use the results of the survey to improve this situation. (Suggestions welcome!)

Kind regards

Stephen 

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[WarGrey Gyoudmon Ju]

Hi, Stephen

Thank you for noticing me about the Racket Slack.

I lost the internet since I was working on the sea during the last two years that no stable internet connection was available.

Now I am planning my way for the second chance to go back to the university.

It's time to move to the Slack as well.

[Stephen De Gabrielle]

Stable internet is a problem for many people. 

Is IRC better in situations like this?

Wishing you success with university

Stephen

--

----

['John Clements' via dev-redirect]

Welcome back!

I want to raise my hand as one user that uses typed racket for many programs, and am not doing any work on typed racket itself for academic purposes. It’s certainly true that I’m generally an academic, but typed racket is not an area of research for me; I just like having the benefits of typed code, especially for libraries that I use heavily and may come back to after weeks or years.

(Also… slack, oy vey.)

John

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[Sage Gerard]

There has been a significant move of general q&a activity away from the mailing lists to the Racket Slack. This is not surprising as communities do change over time and many Open source language communities have moved some or all of their activity to chat systems.

Last we talked about it, Racket Slack isn't a paid workspace due to the sheer expense. We can't direct users to search for answers to questions answered before the 10,000th (?) most recent message. Given current activity levels it wasn't terribly long before I was unable to revisit helpful discussions. I'd say about a week?

In observance of general FOSS etiquette, I don't want to ask or answer the same question twice. Can we still volunteer answers on the mailing lists whenever we want anyway? I know I'd rather stick to the mailing list so long as we can count on a search feature.

~slg

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

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[Stephen De Gabrielle]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 11:33 PM Sage Gerard <sa...@sagegerard.com> wrote:

There has been a significant move of general q&a activity away from the mailing lists to the Racket Slack. This is not surprising as communities do change over time and many Open source language communities have moved some or all of their activity to chat systems.

Last we talked about it, Racket Slack isn't a paid workspace due to the sheer expense. We can't direct users to search for answers to questions answered before the 10,000th (?) most recent message. Given current activity levels it wasn't terribly long before I was unable to revisit helpful discussions. I'd say about a week?

In observance of general FOSS etiquette, I don't want to ask or answer the same question twice. Can we still volunteer answers on the mailing lists whenever we want anyway?

Sounds like a good idea.

Other options include 

- Pull Request to the relevant documentation with the clarification, example or special case

- adding it to the artifacts page https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Artifacts (if appropriate) 

- discussion in github issue thread (or gitlab etc.) 

- write a blog post etc.

I think the responsibility to do these things lies with the questioner, but realistically it might be better to log it as an issue and label as 'documentation required' until you have a chance to create the PR yourself. At least it is findable. 

I know I'd rather stick to the mailing list so long as we can count on a search feature.

+1

 s.

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[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 6:33 PM Sage Gerard <sa...@sagegerard.com> wrote:
>
> There has been a significant move of general q&a activity away from the mailing lists to the Racket Slack. This is not surprising as communities do change over time and many Open source language communities have moved some or all of their activity to chat systems.
>
>

> Last we talked about it, Racket Slack isn't a paid workspace due to the sheer expense. We can't direct users to search for answers to questions answered before the 10,000th (?) most recent message. Given current activity levels it wasn't terribly long before I was unable to revisit helpful discussions. I'd say about a week?

Currently 10,000 messages goes back to May 13.

> In observance of general FOSS etiquette, I don't want to ask or answer the same question twice. Can we still volunteer answers on the mailing lists whenever we want anyway? I know I'd rather stick to the mailing list so long as we can count on a search feature.

Certainly questions, answers, and discussions on the mailing lists are welcome.

Sam

[Sage Gerard]

Good to know it's more than a week, thanks for checking.

~slg

-------- Original Message --------

[WarGrey Gyoudmon Ju]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 9:26 PM Stephen De Gabrielle <spdega...@gmail.com> wrote:

Stable internet is a problem for many people. 

Is IRC better in situations like this?

Maybe or not. In my situation, it was not a connection with limited traffic, it was just no connection with the duration varying from hours to days.

It made me lose the habit of getting in touch with others online.

I was making software from scratch for construction vessels without docs and prerequisite knowledge of that domain,

it therefore took me such a long time to stay on the vessel. I quit that job after finishing the work.

[WarGrey Gyoudmon Ju]

Hey, John, Glad to see you.

I have no bias against academics. I am just finding my way to be one of them.

In general I prefer the mailing list too.