Saša Janiška wrote on 02/13/2016 12:31 PM:
So, at the end I just wonder how is it that such Wonderland is not discovered by much more people?
Being non-mainstream for practitioners, Racket is most popular with people who have the freedom to choose any tools they want, not forced into a mainstream set of options. Most often this means individual alpha techies, researchers, etc.
Though, one of the business bonuses of adopting Racket for non-one-person ventures is that you can then hire a caliber of talent that most companies wouldn't be able to otherwise. I have recently seen this with Racket, and I have seen similar situations in the past with earlier empowering platforms, like Common Lisp.
The business case for platform choice are of course much more complicated than this, but don't discount the value of being able to land the kind of techie talent that otherwise only Google could attract. (Though sometimes Google acquires your company with your Lisp-attracted talent, anyway, in the end. :)
I'd say the biggest downside is that there is still lots of things that are off-the-shelf for some mainstream platforms, but require some in-house DIY work for Racket. Sometimes this is something you can DIY faster and better than you can get an off-the-shelf solution integrated, but sometimes the DIY is just extra cost with no direct benefit.
Also, savvy commercial leadership will be aware that, should anything at all go wrong with a project, someone might ask whether some unorthodox choice of theirs was a factor, including using a non-mainstream platform. So the options have to be weighed, and if the scale points towards something non-mainstream, then leadership needs the will and the clout to back it up politically.
Disclosure: I'm a high-end consultant who prefers to use Racket for the majority of programming-level aspects, and can help an organization with architecture, process, training, etc. So I will tend to make money as commercial Racket adopters are successful.
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