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

Leandro FacchinettiCited 7× on HN, 2021–2022
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commentary · general · 2021–2022 on HN

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.

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

7 comments from Hacker News

@dytyramb2022-06 · in “Ask HN: Why DrRacket is so much memory hungrier than “bloated” Visual Studio?”

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 )

Critical View on HN
@jboynyc2021-06 · in “Why I no longer contribute to Racket”

You're probably thinking about this video: ▶ this video Leandro submitted it to HN but it didn't get any traction: link

@dermal2021-05 · in “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

Critical View on HN
@wsylex2021-03 · in “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!

Critical View on HN
@yaleL2021-02 · in “Creating Languages in Racket (2011)”

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

Critical View on HN