Would it help to call racket2 something else?

[Daniel Prager]

Changing the canonical syntax seems like a bigger jump than from PLT Scheme to Racket.

Perhaps a name change would help.

I looked up English language anagrams of racket and found two: retack and tacker.

retack [Nautical] To tack or alter course by sailing into the wind for a second or further time.

I reckon #lang retack would at least make an apt working title. ;-)

Dan

[David Storrs]

Hang on, 'tack' means to change direction across the wind, so shouldn't 'retack' mean to change direction and then change direction again such that you're back to your original course?  I'm not sure how apropos that would be in this case...  ;>

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[Joel Dueck]

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 4:14:40 PM UTC-5, David Storrs wrote:

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 5:08 PM Daniel Prager <daniel...@gmail.com> wrote:

I reckon #lang retack would at least make an apt working title. ;-)

Hang on, 'tack' means to change direction across the wind, so shouldn't 'retack' mean to change direction and then change direction again such that you're back to your original course?  I'm not sure how apropos that would be in this case...  ;>

I concur with David!

 I think something more like `#lang tacker` 

— as in the actor-noun form of the nautical ‘tack’, 

“to change the course of a sailing vessel by bringing the head into the wind

   [and then causing it to fall off on the other side]” 

or more simply, “to run obliquely against the wind” 

or, “to follow a zig-zag course”

 — feels right for the kind of effort being undertaken. :)

 

Besides, it also provides a pleasing phonetic symmetry with `#lang racket`. 

[Sage Gerard]

#lang new-coke

-slg



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[George Neuner]

On 8/28/2019 10:56 PM, Sage Gerard wrote:
> #lang new-coke
>
> -slg

"New Coke" was horrible ... tasted like the bastard child of Pepsi and
Dr. Pepper.

And no matter what they claim, "Classic Coke" never was (and still
isn't) the same as the original.  Classic Coke hit shelves a mere 3
months after the original was discontinued.  I had cases of original
stockpiled and was able to do side by side comparison.  Classic tasted
like original diluted with extra water.  Probably it was deliberately
diluted to enhance profit and they hoped no one would notice.

YMMV,
George

[Sage Gerard]

That's actually really cool that you had both available to taste. My analogy doesn't totally fit, but the preliminary discussions of Racket2 looked enough like the preliminary discussions for New Coke to remind me of them--and to make cracking a joke about it too tempting.

In terms of the OP, I wonder if the community response would have been better if the name didn't evoke thoughts of a sequel or a redesign. Why is the name Racket2 so important, anyway? Did I miss an announcement that clarified this? Why is a core designer's idea of a canon (for lack of a better word) mixed in with a brand people associate with freedom FROM canon?

Maybe I'm overthinking this. I already know that nothing in #lang racket is getting thrown out or anything. I just feel like I am getting mixed messages about why this is all happening.

-slg




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[Jon Zeppieri]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 11:43 PM Sage Gerard <sa...@sagegerard.com> wrote:
>
> Why is the name Racket2 so important, anyway?

It isn't. It's been mentioned several times that "Racket2" is
currently just a placeholder for whatever it ends up being called.

https://github.com/racket/racket2-rfcs/issues/111#issuecomment-523044004

[Sage Gerard]

Got it, thanks

-slg




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[David Storrs]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 11:43 PM Sage Gerard <sa...@sagegerard.com> wrote:

Maybe I'm overthinking this. I already know that nothing in #lang racket is getting thrown out or anything.

Yes, it is. #lang racket uses parenthesized S-expressions and prefix notation such that operator precedence is not relevant and each expression is a clearly self-contained entity that's easy to manipulate, since it's essentially identical to its own parse tree.  #lang racket2 will be non-parenthesized infix notation, probably with whitespace-significance. Operator precedence will matter, it will be easy to accidentally move only part of an expression/form, and the parse tree will be entirely different from the user-level code.

I just feel like I am getting mixed messages about why this is all happening.

I've heard two explanations thus far. The first is that parentheses and prefix notation are hard for students to grok and (by implication) Racket uptake will increase if it moves to a more Python/Java/C-like syntax. I think I may at some point have suggested that I have reservations about this idea, but I acknowledge that the core developers are more skilled at CS than I am and that they have more experience teaching and therefore a larger dataset about what people find difficult to learn.

The other explanation I've heard is that Racket is due for a serious overhaul and there's a lot of very powerful stuff that could be done if backwards compatibility could be sacrificed. I think this is almost certainly true, although there are certainly challenges.

So far as I'm aware, there isn't a clear statement of whether the primary intent is to gain new users or to increase power for existing users, eg by making the latest CS research available to the masses and fixing warts in the existing language, etc. There's definitely tension between those goals.

One other issue that hasn't been discussed that I've seen is whether #lang racket2 is intended for beginners or experienced developers. Everyone starts off as a beginner but they don't stay beginners for long. (Unless they stop programming completely, in which case there's no point in factoring them into language design issues.) To me this suggests that it would be possible to aim racket2 at experienced developers and use the simpler teaching languages as a way of easing people into the ideas -- which, as I understand it, is what they're intended for and used for right now.

Making syntax more similar to other languages is useful for Racket beginners and will provide easier skill transference. Whether it's better for experienced developers is an open question. Again, the core devs have larger datasets than I do, although I will note that those datasets are almost entirely compared of novices.

-slg




-------- Original Message --------
On Aug 28, 2019, 11:23 PM, George Neuner < gneu...@comcast.net> wrote:

On 8/28/2019 10:56 PM, Sage Gerard wrote:
> #lang new-coke
>
> -slg

"New Coke" was horrible ... tasted like the bastard child of Pepsi and
Dr. Pepper.

And no matter what they claim, "Classic Coke" never was (and still
isn't) the same as the original.  Classic Coke hit shelves a mere 3
months after the original was discontinued.  I had cases of original
stockpiled and was able to do side by side comparison.  Classic tasted
like original diluted with extra water.  Probably it was deliberately
diluted to enhance profit and they hoped no one would notice.

YMMV,
George

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[Jack Firth]

On Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 12:46:53 AM UTC-4, David Storrs wrote:

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 11:43 PM Sage Gerard <sa...@sagegerard.com> wrote:

Maybe I'm overthinking this. I already know that nothing in #lang racket is getting thrown out or anything.

Yes, it is.

I believe Sage's statement was that all current #lang racket modules will continue to work exactly the same, which is true. Nothing changes unless a module decides to use #lang racket2, and modules will not have to know whether or not their dependencies are written in #lang racket, in #lang racket2, or in a mixture of both. Backwards compatibility for existing unchanged modules will be preserved.

[evdubs]

If "racket" is related to "scheme" by being an illegitimate scheme, I think "cartel" could be a good choice for "an even more illegitimate scheme". Plus, it's almost an anagram of racket.

#lang cartel