It always amazes me how feature complete #Racket is. It has
its own IDE and Emacs modes
Cross platform GUI toolkit
Database drivers
JSON/XML serialization
HTTP server/clients
a Package manager/repo
a centralized and standardized documentation repository
the best language and learning materials for any existing Lisp.
Build exe's on every platform
You can start with Racket and be productive within a few days.
Yet, Racketeers always talk about how easy it is to create their own language with Racket, which is a total niche application and mostly irrelevant for any practical usage. And scares of any business programmer who is just curious if Racket is of any value for them.
Any thoughts?
@louis Common Lisp can coexist and compete with C/C++, and Clojure with Java.
Racket has a lot of features but it lacks a clear positioning from the point of view of marketing. The Language-Oriented-Paradigm is a good aspect, but it is not yet associated to some precise "marketing advantage". There is no yet some killer framework, using Racket. It is difficult to think to a precise usage scenario "owned" by Racket.
Also in the academic world, Racket is seen probably as a "toy", respect Haskell, Idris and other PL. So, it has not their same charisma, despite it has a very good and interesting type system.
