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Racket: Why I Think It’s a Great Language, and Why I’m Not Using It Anymore

Leandro Facchinetti
Commentary
YouTube
Cited on HN 7 times, 2021–2022, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Mostly cited critically, as evidence of problems in the Racket community, rather than recommended.

Leandro Facchinetti explains why he thinks Racket is a great language and why he stopped using it. He describes his backstory and experiences with the Racket community.

1 citations · 6 critical · Commentary · partly dated

7 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@SnTJoy Jan 2021 Pushes back
on HN thread An awful experience: top Racket creator harassed the waiter at the conference
Read more
I've had disgusting experiences interacting with people from Racket community in the past, but so far I thought I was the only one. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that way. Recently, a computer Scientist Leandro Facchinetti described in his video his ugly experiences with top people in Racket community. The experience was such that he completely gave up his PHD and the use of Racket forever. You can view the video here: [this video] In the video Leandro Facchinetti says: Speaking of people, it's very sad that I had same bad experiences with some people in the Racket community, especially the people up top because they are the kind of people who are smart and they know about it and they will not lose a chance to tell you. I'll give you some examples: I was at the Racket conference having dinner with one of the creators of the language and some other attendees and the creator of the language had some very good points about higher education and how it is kind of a scam in the U.S. but to prove his point he decided some questions to the waiter that were kind of uncomfortable and everyone at the table kind of cringed . Of course, the waiter was gratious about it but still... As another example, I was talking to another one of the creators of the language and he called one of my collaborators a doofus and the educators at my university, which used to be John Hopkins University, a bunch of donkeys . I understand that he had some points to make about how educators work but this is not the
@SnTJoy Jan 2021 Pushes back
on HN thread Racket Compiler and Runtime Status
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Nice article. I think using Racket shoud be avoided because of its problematic community. I've had disgusting experiences interacting with people from Racket community in the past, but so far I thought I was the only one. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that way. Recently, a computer Scientist Leandro Facchinetti described in his video his ugly experiences with top people in Racket community. The experience was such that he completely gave up his PHD and the use of Racket forever. You can view the video here: [this video] In the video Leandro Facchinetti says: Speaking of people, it's very sad that I had same bad experiences with some people in the Racket community, especially the people up top because they are the kind of people who are smart and they know about it and they will not lose a chance to tell you. I'll give you some examples: I was at the Racket conference having dinner with one of the creators of the language and some other attendees and the creator of the language had some very good points about higher education and how it is kind of a scam in the U.S. but to prove his point he decided some questions to the waiter that were kind of uncomfortable and everyone at the table kind of cringed. Of course, the waiter was gratious about it but still... As another example, I was talking to another one of the creators of the language and he called one of my collaborators a doofus and the educators at my university, which used to be John Hopkins University, a bunch of donkeys. I
@yaleL Feb 2021 Pushes back
on HN thread Creating Languages in Racket (2011)
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I think using Racket should be avoided because of its problematic community. I've had disgusting experiences interacting with people from Racket community in the past, but so far I thought I was the only one. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that way. Recently, a computer Scientist Leandro Facchinetti described in his video his ugly experiences with top people in Racket community. The experience was such that he completely gave up his PHD and the use of Racket forever. You can view the video here: [this video] In the video Leandro Facchinetti says: Speaking of people, it's very sad that I had same bad experiences with some people in the Racket community, especially the people up top because they are the kind of people who are smart and they know about it and they will not lose a chance to tell you. I'll give you some examples: I was at the Racket conference having dinner with one of the creators of the language and some other attendees and the creator of the language had some very good points about higher education and how it is kind of a scam in the U.S. but to prove his point he decided some questions to the waiter that were kind of uncomfortable and everyone at the table kind of cringed. Of course, the waiter was gratious about it but still... As another example, I was talking to another one of the creators of the language and he called one of my collaborators a doofus and the educators at my university, which used to be John Hopkins University, a bunch of donkeys. I understand t
@wsylex Mar 2021 Pushes back
on HN thread How to Design Programs (2014)
There are some people who completely gave up of Racket just because of him (take a look of this video: [this video] ). And, speaking of ego, just take a look at the author list on the cover of this book: [link] Notice the font size of his name, versus the font size of the students who actually wrote the book and everything will be clear to you!
@dermal May 2021 Pushes back
on HN thread Racket 8.1
There are some very valid reasons [1] why we should stay away from Racket: toxic community, toxic people... And come on: no one has ever really used Racket to write some decent nontrivial web application, documentation is awful (and, please, don't count HN here, cause HN is written in Arc). [1] [this video]
@dytyramb Jun 2022 Pushes back
on HN thread Ask HN: Why DrRacket is so much memory hungrier than “bloated” Visual Studio?
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The bottom line is: 1) DrRacket consumes 0.7 GB od RAM for very little functionality, in comparison to Visual Studio 2) The performace was even worse but than Racket core team switched to excelent Chez scheme, being unable to produce such a quality compiler 3) If by any chance DrRacket was written in C, it would consume 300Kb of max memory, considering how little functionality this `development environment` has 4) I admire Kent Dybvig, I adore Marc Feeley, I love Mark Tarver. They all did really great things. But this team of the Racket really deserves more contempt than admiration (for details see this link: [this video] )

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