[racket] Racket documentation for web development is just awful!

[Racket Noob]

Dear Racketeers,
 
I think I am a man of average intelligence. I have read, for example, HtDP and SICP without any major problems. Nevertheless, even with the best will, I do not understand the documentation called "Web Applications in Racket", written by Jay McCarthy (http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/index.html).
 
I think that I'm not the only one who does not understand (and, if we look at the number of web applications written in Racket today, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It is a shame because Racket is a great programming language, but with poorly written and unclear documentation like this, Racket will hardly ever become popular in the web world!).
 
Let's face it: Jay McCarthy is perhaps an excellent programmer and all his honor. But, as a documentation writer, this man has no idea.
This is my well-intentioned advice to this community: let someone with more literary talent to write documentation for web development in the Racket!
 
Racket Noob

[Robby Findler]

Please, if you have constructive criticism, it would be welcome. But
messages like this are not helpful.

Robby

2011/12/17 Racket Noob <racke...@hotmail.com>:

> _________________________________________________
>  For list-related administrative tasks:
>  http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users

_________________________________________________
For list-related administrative tasks:
http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users

[Matthias Felleisen]

Dear Racket Noon, thank you for outspoken criticism. There is no question that all of our documentation and writing could be improved so that a lot more people can understand the basics. So here is a proposal: 

  write it with the help of list members here. 

Yes, there's a significant gap between introductory books such as HtDP and SICP on one hand and web docs on the other. So if someone like you could write (possibly plain) text with others here that introduces web programming on a gradual basis from these starting points, you would do a lot of people a favor and yourself the largest one -- one teaches to learn. 

-- Matthias

[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

First, I want to encourage you to take a look at the "Continue"
tutorial: http://docs.racket-lang.org/continue/ . It provides an
excellent introduction for people new to the Racket web server.

Second, one of the great things about Jay is that in addition to the
video game talent and popped collars, he's very responsive to
suggestions. If you have specific things that could be explained
better, I'm sure he'd be happy to hear about them.

Finally, while we all appreciate feedback, personally insulting people
isn't appropriate in this context.

2011/12/17 Racket Noob <racke...@hotmail.com>:

> _________________________________________________
>  For list-related administrative tasks:
>  http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users

--
sam th
sa...@ccs.neu.edu

[Racket Noob]

 I've already read. Continue tutorial is not bad, I passed through it (congratulations, Danny Yoo, you're man!)

But now when I want to make the next step and further understand the web development in Racket, unfortunately I am forced to read Jay's documentation. I am very sad about it. : (

Unfortunately, in this case I find it difficult to give any constructive criticism, I do not know even where to start.

 

Maybe a question for the end: Do the URLs of pages that use continuation mechanism have to look ugly and cryptic? Can this somehow be avoided (so that we have pretty URLs, but still have a continuation?)

 

 

Racket Noob

[Neil Van Dyke]

Racket Noob wrote at 12/17/2011 11:05 AM:
> and, if we look at the number of web applications written in Racket
> today, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

There's at least a few more than that. Some Racket developers are
secretive.

Regarding the topic of your message, consider that you are reading the
*reference manual* for something that is big and complicated. As you
know, the first priority of a reference manual is to capture technical
information, not to gently instruct in usage, nor to be fun to read.
Perhaps, as Matthias suggested, you would write one of the usage
documents, based on what you're learning and on your prior experience?

--
http://www.neilvandyke.org/

[Hendrik Boom]

Let me react just to what's being said here, though I am not familiar
with any of the documents mentioned.

I've found that what's often missing in documentation written by
programmers is that it's too nose-to-the-ground. Once you understand
what's going on, it's excellent in telling you the details that you
have to know to use it. But until you have that global understanding,
you're lost. Is this what's going on here? All tactics and no
strategy, so to speak?

It is quite difficult to write good overview documentation. The
programmer tends to be so familiar with the software that he lacks the
level of ignorance and misunderstanding the newbie brings to the
subject. This makes it very difficult to see what needs to be written.

I recall the excellent manuals published by IBM way back in the 60's
for their OS/360 series. Each significant system component had two
separate manuals.

One was called "Concepts and Facilities", which explained how to use
the various system calls in concert to achieve common ends. No, it
didn't consist of code examples (though they were there); it consisted
primarily of explanations in English, with snatches of code to look
at when you wanted to see the details. The snatches were just
snatches. In a section about reading files, they contained only the
pieces actually involved in reading files, not anything resembling a
runnable application. The English text explained the order in which
they had to be called, how they interacted, when you had to allocate
buffers and free them, how you had to do it, and so forth.

The other was called "Reference Manual" and contained, system call by
system call, its complete, precise description, all its mandatory and
optional parameters, and so forth. Incomprehensible if you hadn't read
the "Concepts and facilities" section first.

This reply may not help you. But it might structure discussion, so
we'll get an idea what's lacking that you need.

Or not.

-- hendrik

On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 05:37:32PM +0100, Racket Noob wrote:
>
>
> I've already read. Continue tutorial is not bad, I passed through it (congratulations, Danny Yoo, you're man!)

> But now when I want to make the next step and further understand the web development in Racket, unfortunately I am forced to read Jay's documentation. I am very sad about it. : (Unfortunately, in this case I find it difficult to give any constructive criticism, I do not know even where to start. Maybe a question for the end: Do the URLs of pages that use continuation mechanism have to look ugly and cryptic? Can this somehow be avoided (so that we have pretty URLs, but still have a continuation?) Racket Noob > From: sa...@ccs.neu.edu

[Racket Noob]

 Hey Niel, I'm not your enemy (just annoys me that do not understand anything), but poor documentation surely is.
 
Regarding this "big and complicated thing": the Windows API, for example, is ugly and complicated. Yet, legendary Charles Petzold managed to write a very readable and clear book about it. (Oh, if only we could convince Petzold to write a nice book about web development in a Racket! :))
 
Of course, I cannot write better documentation because i don't have a clue, but I hope that I can at least express my opinion that this current is not good. And i think this is one of the main reasons for poor use of Racket in the web (otherwise, Racket is just great!).
 

---

Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:06:54 -0500
From: ne...@neilvandyke.org
To: racke...@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: [racket] Racket documentation for web development is just awful!

Racket Noob wrote at 12/17/2011 11:05 AM:

and, if we look at the number of web applications written in Racket today, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

[Shriram Krishnamurthi]

Hi R. Noob,

> Do the URLs of pages that use continuation
> mechanism have to look ugly and cryptic?

Yes they do. The URLs are ugly *because* they are cryptic. They are
cryptic because it is a route to system security. If they were
pretty, people could guess them, and that would adversely affect
security in a huge way.

Incidentally, this is something we stressed from the very beginning
(~late 2000). It meant that certain kinds of Web attacks over which
people and Web sites spent a great deal of time (such as CSRF attacks)
could simply never occur for systems built atop the PLT Web server.

This idea is also incorporated into Google's Belay project:

https://sites.google.com/site/belayresearchproject/

If you look at the list of features they state, essentially every
single one of these maps onto "ugly and cryptic" URLs.

Shriram

[Jay McCarthy]

But, if you would like to have more traditional URLs in addition to the continuation/cryptic ones, you can use the web-server/dispatch library:

http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/dispatch.html

It starts with a bit of guide to orient you before the reference manual.

It allows you to create URLs like

/posts/456

and if during the generation of that page you hit a continuation operation, the URL will be something like

/posts/456;gobbledygook

where the last "clean" URL is inside of the current "ugly" URL.

I find that most people want to mostly use web-server/dispatch but occasionally use continuations for the sequential computations in their Web app.

Jay

--
Jay McCarthy <j...@cs.byu.edu>
Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University
http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay

"The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93

[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

Would it be possible for programmer to provide a name generator, so
that you could have pretty urls of the form:

foo.com/session/175

You'd have to ensure in the web server that there weren't conflicts
with the names currently being managed, but it seems plausible.

On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Jay McCarthy <jay.mc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It allows you to create URLs like
>
> /posts/456
>
> and if during the generation of that page you hit a continuation operation,
> the URL will be something like
>
> /posts/456;gobbledygook
>
> where the last "clean" URL is inside of the current "ugly" URL.

--
sam th
sa...@ccs.neu.edu

[Gerry Weaver]

Hi Noob,

I'm very new to Racket and the community as well. I happen to agree that the web development docs could use some improvement. However, I'm not sure tweaking the one person that is in the best position to help you is wise. Further, from what I have seen so far, Jay is very objective in the way that he handles things like this. I find the Racket community to be very refreshing in general and it disappoints me to see a post that is worded the way yours was. I think it is important to remember that folks like Jay are giving us the benefits of their hard work for free. If your not in to writing some docs (as someone suggested), perhaps your questions could have been "How do I get started?" or "This is what I've got so far, can y'all help me move forward?".  I think you will find that if you just start walking, people will help you along the way. I don't think it is necessary or productive to call someone out. We should just be thankful that we have Racket and any docs for it at all.

Just my .02

Thanks,

Gerry

---

-----Original Message-----
From: "Racket Noob" <racke...@hotmail.com>
To: us...@racket-lang.org
Date: 12/17/11 10:06
Subject: [racket] Racket documentation for web development is just awful!

 
Dear Racketeers,
 
I think I am a man of average intelligence. I have read, for example, HtDP and SICP without any major problems. Nevertheless, even with the best will, I do not understand the documentation called "Web Applications in Racket", written by Jay McCarthy ( http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/index.html).

 
I think that I'm not the only one who does not understand (and, if we look at the number of web applications written in Racket today, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It is a shame because Racket is a great programming language, but with poorly written and unclear documentation like this, Racket will hardly ever become popular in the web world!).
 
Let's face it: Jay McCarthy is perhaps an excellent programmer and all his honor. But, as a documentation writer, this man has no idea.
This is my well-intentioned advice to this community: let someone with more literary talent to write documentation for web development in the Racket!
 
Racket Noob
 

[Jay McCarthy]

That's already possible with "stateless" servlets, through the stuffer API, I'll investigate doing it for stateful ones and get back to you.

Jay

On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 1:16 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <sa...@ccs.neu.edu> wrote:

Would it be possible for programmer to provide a name generator, so
that you could have pretty urls of the form:

foo.com/session/175

You'd have to ensure in the web server that there weren't conflicts
with the names currently being managed, but it seems plausible.

On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Jay McCarthy <jay.mc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It allows you to create URLs like
>
> /posts/456
>
> and if during the generation of that page you hit a continuation operation,
> the URL will be something like
>
> /posts/456;gobbledygook
>
> where the last "clean" URL is inside of the current "ugly" URL.

--
sam th
sa...@ccs.neu.edu

[Danny Yoo]

2011/12/17 Racket Noob <racke...@hotmail.com>:

>
>  I've already read. Continue tutorial is not bad, I passed through it
> (congratulations, Danny Yoo, you're man!)

Wait, wait. You can't thank me on this one and ignore Jay on this:
he's a co-author. He absolutely shares the blame for that document
too! :)

A few people are pointing out that criticizing Jay for writing a
reference manual is somewhat unfair. I agree. Documents have a
particular audience in mind, and the reference docs are not primarily
meant to be tutorial material, but to describe a system in
excruciating detail.

> But now when I want to make the next step and further understand the web
> development in Racket,

I think you're really complaining about the following: you're not
finding easy "next steps" to continue after the Continue tutorial. Is
that your understanding as well?

That would mean, not that the reference documentation is not
necessarily badly written, but rather that there's a lack of a
tutorial treatment of the advanced features in the library.

If that's the case, if you can point out what you think is missing
from the story of developing Racket web apps, that would be really
helpful for me and other potential authors. Is there a particular
topic that you want to understand?

[Jordan Schatz]

> web world!). Let's face it: Jay McCarthy is perhaps an excellent
> programmer and all his honor. But, as a documentation writer, this man
> has no idea. This is my well-intentioned advice to this community: let
> someone with more literary talent to write documentation for web
> development in the Racket! Racket Noob

I think I've been one of the louder critics of the web development
documentation, and I also had (well still have) a frustrating time with
them. BUT Jay's an excellent documentation writer, and an excellent
programmer.

I think there is room for more documentation, I like the succinctness of
the current docs:
http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/index.html
http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server-internal/index.html
and I think how much I like them will only grow as I continue to practice
developing with racket. But there is room for more of an introductory
text, not a beginner text, but something to introduce experienced
developers to some of the ideas that "Web Applications in Racket"
references.

The "cryptic" URLs is an excellent example, when I first encountered them
I thought "man this is the first thing I should volunteer to fix". I'd
been taught, and taught others in my turn, about the perfection of human
readable, unchanging URLs, that responded sensibly to get/put/post/head
requests. Now that I've read "Automatically RESTful Web Applications"
http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay/static/icfp065-mccarthy.pdf and
http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay/static/oopsla026-mccarthy.pdf and
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/pcmkf-cont-from-gen-stack-insp/
I know that there is nothing broken about the URLs and that my ideas of
what REST is where what was broken. But when I gave those papers to one
of my developers to inform him of why we where changing to ugly URLs he
thought I was off my rocker. He asked for a tutorial instead of a
research paper.

Along those lines I have started to collect notes on what developers new
to racket encounter: http://github.com/shofetim/Racket-the-Missing-Manual
please fork and help add what you think the docs need : )

Shalom,
Jordan

[Jordan Schatz]

> write it with the help of list members here.

I've got the barest of a start here:
http://github.com/shofetim/Racket-the-Missing-Manual

[Jordan Schatz]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 05:19:11PM -0500, Danny Yoo wrote:
> I think you're really complaining about the following: you're not
> finding easy "next steps" to continue after the Continue tutorial. Is
> that your understanding as well?
>
> That would mean, not that the reference documentation is not
> necessarily badly written, but rather that there's a lack of a
> tutorial treatment of the advanced features in the library.
>
> If that's the case, if you can point out what you think is missing
> from the story of developing Racket web apps, that would be really
> helpful for me and other potential authors. Is there a particular
> topic that you want to understand?

I think that "Continue: Web Applications in Racket" feels like HtDP, and
therefor feels like it is an overly simplified teaching example, and not
the way I "should" go about building a "real" app. After looking at Jay's
magic 8 ball https://github.com/jeapostrophe/m8b I'm not sure if Continue
is an oversimplification or not.

For someone who is unfamiliar with continuations, formlets, and doesn't
have a particularly good understanding of HTTP & TLS (ie SSL) I think its
a really big jump to go from "Continue: Web Applications in Racket" to
"Web Applications in Racket"
http://docs.racket-lang.org/web-server/index.html

Thats not exactly where I was, but that is where most people I am
introducing racket to are at.

Also it would be really nice to be told how one "should" develop with
racket... there is abunch of extra information that could be hidden in an
introduction to racket for experienced develops type of manual, and alot
of direction that could be given. Probably not even cover that there are
stateful servlets, and just say to use stateless ones, include how to use
a data store (db, mongo, whatever) and don't cover serializing to
disk. Suggest a directory layout and a way to organize servlets, view,
model, and controller code. Or if MVC isn't the suggested pattern, make
some other pattern explicit.

Thanks,
Jordan

[Grant Rettke]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Jordan Schatz <jor...@noionlabs.com> wrote:
> Also it would be really nice to be told how one "should" develop with
> racket... there is abunch of extra information that could be hidden in an
> introduction to racket for experienced develops type of manual, and alot
> of direction that could be given. Probably not even cover that there are
> stateful servlets, and just say to use stateless ones, include how to use
> a data store (db, mongo, whatever) and don't cover serializing to
> disk. Suggest a directory layout and a way to organize servlets, view,
> model, and controller code. Or if MVC isn't the suggested pattern, make
> some other pattern explicit.

That sounds very interesting.

[Racket Noob]

Jordan, beautiful are your ideas and suggestions, but unfortunately, I think that they are futile. Why do I say this? I think that Racket primarily serves to a specific group of people as an inexhaustible source for mass-production of always the same academic articles, and much less for everyday, practical programming.

But to get back to Danny's question:
I think it would be most useful that, after the "Continue" tutorial, follows one realistic example of more complex web application, through a detailed story about how and why it was made just that way.

Of course, that hypotetical advanced tutorial should explain to people how to get a "nice" URLs, how to "ajaxify" application, how to cache certain parts of the rendered page, etc, etc.

And it should conclude with discussion about how to achieve high scalability (for example, how to create a new Twitter in Racket, with millions of users!).

 

[Neil Van Dyke]

Jordan Schatz wrote at 12/19/2011 01:04 PM:
> Also it would be really nice to be told how one "should" develop with
> racket... there is abunch of extra information that could be hidden in an
> introduction to racket for experienced develops type of manual, and alot
> of direction that could be given. Probably not even cover that there are
> stateful servlets, and just say to use stateless ones, include how to use
> a data store (db, mongo, whatever) and don't cover serializing to
> disk. Suggest a directory layout and a way to organize servlets, view,
> model, and controller code. Or if MVC isn't the suggested pattern, make
> some other pattern explicit.
>

I suggest that such a tutorial -- which presents a dumbed-down Racket in
terms utterly familiar to any Java/Python/PHP/Ruby/etc. Web grunt --
start by trying to scare away any readers who are only looking for a
slightly better Ruby.

There *are* reasons to use Racket over almost anything else, but they
are things like syntactic extension, dynamic language features,
continuation-based Web serving, and the smarter developer community.

Without scaring away readers (or a preface of motivation), there is an
implied "Here is YET ANOTHER slightly different syntax for grunting and
pushing out Web apps in the exact same way you have been for years, but
with a nebulous aura of being somehow better, in some way to be revealed
later (perhaps involving artificial intelligence, because, hey, Lisp)."

--
http://www.neilvandyke.org/

[Matthias Felleisen]

On Dec 19, 2011, at 5:02 PM, Racket Noob wrote:

Jordan, beautiful are your ideas and suggestions, but unfortunately, I think that they are futile. Why do I say this? I think that Racket primarily serves to a specific group of people as an inexhaustible source for mass-production of always the same academic articles, and much less for everyday, practical programming.

Is your goal to turn off every single core and non-core member on this list? Or do you actually care?  

[John Clements]

On Dec 19, 2011, at 5:02 PM, Racket Noob wrote:

> Jordan, beautiful are your ideas and suggestions, but unfortunately, I think that they are futile. Why do I say this? I think that Racket primarily serves to a specific group of people as an inexhaustible source for mass-production of always the same academic articles, and much less for everyday, practical programming.

*plonk*

... boy, it's been a while.

John

[Todd O'Bryan]

I think Racket Noob is actually somebody from another language just
messing with people. The hotmail address, the erudite vocabulary
couched in slightly broken English, the clearly antagonistic tone...it
all adds up to a plant.

The question is who? Is it Guido? Matz? Martin Odersky? I somehow
think all of those people have too little time, so I'm guessing it's
someone with a less high-profile language. Maybe LOLCODE.

Todd (who hopes this is taken in the light-hearted manner in which it
was intended)

[Neil Van Dyke]

Racket Noob wrote at 12/19/2011 05:02 PM:

I think that Racket primarily serves to a specific group of people as an inexhaustible source for mass-production of always the same academic articles, and much less for everyday, practical programming.

I myself am quite fond of inflammatory tone as recreational activity, but in this case, the substance of your assertion is far off the mark on multiple points, which I think spoils the effect.

I think it would be most useful that, after the "Continue" tutorial, follows one realistic example of more complex web application, through a detailed story about how and why it was made just that way.

This is a good suggestion. It will also take a while for someone to do, so, in the meantime, people might be interested in a (non-mass-produced) article on earlier Racket Web app support: http://untyped.com/files/icfp068-welsh.pdf

--
http://www.neilvandyke.org/

[Racket Noob]

 

> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:48:11 -0500
> Subject: Re: [racket] Racket documentation for web development is just awful!
> From: toddo...@gmail.com
> To: matt...@ccs.neu.edu
> CC: racke...@hotmail.com; us...@racket-lang.org

>
> I think Racket Noob is actually somebody from another language just
> messing with people. The hotmail address, the erudite vocabulary
> couched in slightly broken English, the clearly antagonistic tone...it
> all adds up to a plant.
>
> The question is who? Is it Guido? Matz? Martin Odersky? I somehow
> think all of those people have too little time, so I'm guessing it's
> someone with a less high-profile language. Maybe LOLCODE.
>

 

Wrong!

Mr. Matthis already knows some details about my "psychopathological" profile.
Lovers of conspiracy theories, this time you're wrong: I'm just a user who has a burning desire to learn the racket, but it is not easy because of poor documentation!

[Matthias Felleisen]

On Dec 19, 2011, at 6:05 PM, Racket Noob wrote:

Mr. Matthis already knows some details about my "psychopathological" profile.

Me? 

[Racket Noob]

Yes, You, professor: some time ago I was asked you to rate my solution for "Peg Solitaire" and once again thank you for your help and kindness!
 

---

Subject: Re: [racket] FW: Racket documentation for web development is just awful!
From: matt...@ccs.neu.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:10:13 -0500
CC: us...@racket-lang.org
To: racke...@hotmail.com

[Matthias Felleisen]

That doesn't me I know you. I provided advice on a solution to a book problem, and that's that. 

[Racket Noob]

ok, ok, please, don't be so pedantic. In the correspondence I've told you a little about yourself. And that's what I meant when I said that you already know some details about me...
 
But that's irrelevant anyway. What is relevant is that the mass-production continues... and that goes hand in hand with negligible use of racket in practice. : (
 

---

Subject: Re: [racket] FW: Racket documentation for web development is just awful!
From: matt...@ccs.neu.edu

Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:23:38 -0500

[Racket Noob]

Of course I care!
I love racket and deeply respect all of you. But, I'm afraid that if you go this way, Racket remain just another never used "academic" language.
 
Community is too hermetic and self-sufficient. Let's take only RacketCon's videos as example: you, boys are so much in your own world that you do not realize how important it was to publish them on time.

 

 

---

Subject: Re: [racket] Racket documentation for web development is just awful!
From: matt...@ccs.neu.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:38:00 -0500
CC: us...@racket-lang.org
To: racke...@hotmail.com

 

[Gerry Weaver]

Hi Noob,

I believe I mentioned before that I had some trouble with the web development docs myself. However, after thinking it over a bit, I decided to invest more time in learning the language. It occurred to me that in order to really take advantage of the web server, I would need to become a lot more familiar with the advanced language concepts it is based on. I'm finding that as I gain knowledge and experience, my ability to understand the docs improves. The point I'm trying to make here is that without the language foundation, it is just magical code. This is true with or without a beginners guide. I would actually vote for a more thorough treatment of the language itself documentation wise. How would one hope to use a continuation based server effectively without a thorough understanding continuations? Isn't it these advanced language features that attracted us to Racket/Scheme in the first place? At this point in time, I'm not completely sure the additional web server docs wouldn't just serve to short circuit the language learning process. Many thanks for the patience of those who waited for me to realize this ;-)

I think Neil makes an interesting point. It seems like Racket would appeal more to systems programmers coming from languages like C/C++ than it would to the Java/Python/Ruby/PHP/Perl/etc. crowd. Racket in general has a much higher price of entry than your average scripting language. I mean no offense to web developers. I just think Racket/Scheme requires quite a bit more effort and commitment than most would be willing to make.

Thanks,

Gerry

---

-----Original Message-----
From: "Racket Noob" <racke...@hotmail.com>
To: us...@racket-lang.org

Date: 12/19/11 17:37
Subject: [racket] FW: Racket documentation for web development is just awful!

 

Of course I care!
I love racket and deeply respect all of you . But , I'm afraid that if you go this way , Racket remain just another never used " academic " language .
 
Community is too hermetic and self-sufficient . L et's take only RacketCon's videos as example: you, boys are so much in your own world that you do not realize how important it was to publish them on time .

 

 

---

Subject: Re: [racket] Racket documentation for web development is just awful!
From: matt...@ccs.neu.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:38:00 -0500
CC: us...@racket-lang.org
To: racke...@hotmail.com

 

 

Is your goal to turn off every single core and non-core member on this list? Or do you actually care?  

 

 

 

 

[Richard Cleis]

On Dec 19, 2011, at 6:03 PM, Gerry Weaver wrote:

Hi Noob,

I believe I mentioned before that I had some trouble with the web development docs myself. However, after thinking it over a bit, I decided to invest more time in learning the language. It occurred to me that in order to really take advantage of the web server, I would need to become a lot more familiar with the advanced language concepts it is based on.

Half the people I deal with argue that they don't want to use Racket because it is not advanced enough; the other half argue that it is too advanced. I am forever trying to interpret these observations without drawing pessimistic conclusions.

I'm finding that as I gain knowledge and experience, my ability to understand the docs improves. The point I'm trying to make here is that without the language foundation, it is just magical code. This is true with or without a beginners guide. I would actually vote for a more thorough treatment of the language itself documentation wise.

I feel more informed by the Racket group than any other, despite the subject of this thread. I use Racket partly because The Racket Guide is so good; it is even interesting to read. The Racket Reference has the remainder of the details required for completing software that pays the bills. Those two sources are the fish, and the often mentioned Racket-oriented texts are for learning how to fish. I admit that I don't do web programming, so I have no opinion of the web docs.

How would one hope to use a continuation based server effectively without a thorough understanding continuations? Isn't it these advanced language features that attracted us to Racket/Scheme in the first place? At this point in time, I'm not completely sure the additional web server docs wouldn't just serve to short circuit the language learning process. Many thanks for the patience of those who waited for me to realize this ;-)

I think Neil makes an interesting point. It seems like Racket would appeal more to systems programmers coming from languages like C/C++ than it would to the Java/Python/Ruby/PHP/Perl/etc. crowd. Racket in general has a much higher price of entry than your average scripting language.

I don't agree. Racket could be taught in a manner which leads to programming like typical programmers in those other languages you mention. The apparently higher price of entry is for programming in better ways. Programmers in my lab occasionally admit that they wrote something in Racket, but actually wrote it like they would in their normal language. The price of entry for that is within the deviation of any of those languages.

I mean no offense to web developers. I just think Racket/Scheme requires quite a bit more effort and commitment than most would be willing to make.

I find that the programming community is loaded with people who work hard, but don't want to learn more. To them, Racket is like cod liver oil in a soda shoppe.

Have as much fun as I do! ... and note that cod liver oil has vitamins, but soda is bad for your teeth.

rac

[Matthias Felleisen]

On Dec 19, 2011, at 9:18 PM, Richard Cleis wrote:

 Racket is like cod liver oil in a soda shoppe.

Loving it

[Gerry Weaver]

Hi Richard,

>Racket is like cod liver oil in a soda shoppe.

This is true until you take a few healthy swigs and start to realize what could have been while watching your entire programming career pass before your eyes.  I'm starting to see so many things that could have been done so much easier, better, cleaner, etc.. I guess I'm already past the point of no return. I've drank way too much cod liver oil ;-)

Thanks,

Gerry

[Carson Chittom]

Racket Noob <racke...@hotmail.com> writes:

> Of course I care!
> I love racket and deeply respect all of you. But, I'm afraid that if
> you go this way, Racket remain just another never used "academic"
> language.

If you genuinely believe that, then you have it in your power to fix
things: *do* things in Racket rather than complaining (or, as I saw on
a bumper sticker once, "Quit bitching and start the revolution").

But of course that won't happen. I've never understood the pleasure
some people get out of trolling.