Advice for beginner

[Denis Maier]

Hi,

I've started working with the Htdp textbook as I'd like to acquire a solid foundation in (functional) programming. The approach to teaching programming looks very promising. Having this ressource available online for free is absolutely amazing. Thank you.

One slight annoyance I came across: I've found running code snippets with the beginning languages rather slow, much slower than with `#lang racket`. Why is that? Anything I could do to make that more performant? (Actually, running simple racket snippets is much faster in the REPL than with DrRacket. Is there a way to use the BSLs on the command line?)

Or: Could I just use work through the textbook with `#lang racket`? How different is racket from the student languages? Are they subsets, i.e. will everything that works in those languages also work with racket proper?

All the best,

Denis Maier

[Ben Greenman]

The student languages are not subsets of Racket.

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[John Clements]

Can you be more specific? Are there particular programs that you can point to? I think the solution to your problem is going to depend a bit on the kind of slowdowns that you’re seeing.

Best,

John Clements

[Denis Maier]

Thanks John for your answer, and sorry for not answering for so long... I've been occupied by other things, and I've had to postpone my "learn Racket" ambitions a bit...
Anyway, time for a fresh start...

Am 08.09.2020 um 22:08 schrieb John Clements:
Can you be more specific? Are there particular programs that you can point to? I think the solution to your problem is going to depend a bit on the kind of slowdowns that you’re seeing.

I was just referring to how long it takes in DrRacket to evaluate an apparently simple program. Something like

```
(+ 1 1)
```

It takes about 3-4 seconds to run that.

Simply adding a the #lang declaration makes the whole thing much faster...

```
#lang racket
(+ 1 1)
```

Actually, it looks really similar to the problems described here (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37508535/excruciatingly-slow-over-ten-seconds-for-1-1-with-language-how-to-des) and here (https://github.com/racket/drracket/issues/281).

Best,
Denis