On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 5:27 PM, Andrew Gwozdziewycz <apg...@gmail.com> wrote: > I love seeing all of these project ideas, but I really don't think > Racket needs a "killer app." I think what it needs is the people > passionate about it building tools in it, and *using* those tools in > the work place, and sharing the experiences of using those tools more > vocally. > > We need people building tools and blogging about why using Racket made > the job easier. Why would it be harder to do in Python, or Ruby? We > need straight up advocacy, and that starts with everyone in this > thread who *hasn't* done that yet. > > I started the thread about a "graphviz" like because I'd like to write > documentation without pointing and clicking--including the figures I > need to illustrate a point. That's not a killer app, but that's > something that I can *share* inside the work place to make the lives > of developers (who'd rather declare a drawing, than fight to point and > click with it), to have an integrated documentation system they can > use from their editor. It makes sense to me, and I'm sure it'd make > sense to them, too. > > You might get some push back on the parentheses! You might get some > push back on the fact that Racket has it's roots in "LISP" > (intentionally capped). But, that's an opportunity. Show your > coworkers the *why*. Explain to them why it's powerful. Explain to > them that they can set up an editor to do parentheses matching. > Explain to them contracts, or Typed Racket, or how powerful the > language extension model is. > > Anyway. I don't think it makes sense to solve problems that you don't > have. Solve your own problems, but do it in Racket. Then spread the > word that Racket made it easy, fun, and elegant! Be sure to somehow > include that the community is extremely welcoming, helpful, and > growing!
I agree that talking about how great Racket is will be an important part of increasing uptake. That said, I contend that it is not enough. People have been talking about how awesome LISP is for literally decades, and many of those people are influencers. Example: Paul Graham, who is essentially the god of Silicon Valley startups, has blogged extensively about how amazing LISP is and how it vastly increased the speed of his startup. Despite that, I know of exactly zero SV startups that are using LISP -- I've been out of the valley for a couple years now, so maybe it's changed, but I was there for quite a while and never heard of any. So, yes. Talking Racket up is necessary, but it's not enough. There's a chicken and egg problem -- there's no one in the private sector who lists Racket on their resume, so there's no jobs to be had in Racket. There's no jobs to be had in Racket, so there's no reason to learn Racket for your resume. Everyone is constantly busy and staying on the SOTA curve in order to maintain employability is difficult. If I'm a working programmer I have N hours of study time in a week. There are lots of interesting things to study, so would I devote those precious hours to Racket (something that doesn't make me more employable and which no one I know is using) as opposed to learning a more popular tool (e.g. a web framework, or a job-viable programming language) or a popular field of study (e.g. machine learning, data science) that opens up entire new career tracks for me? The key rule of sales is "find the pain, fix it". Simply saying "use Racket because it's awesome" does not fix anyone's pain; they are perfectly happy with the languages they're using, so there is no pain there. On the other hand, show them a tool that solves a problem they have (a source of pain) and they will happily learn this weird, unemployable, thing-I-never-heard-of language in order to use it. > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 9:09 PM, James <jbiomant...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Does a killer app or library sorely need a Racket alternative? >> >> Let me throw out a few things which we would use in our business even if >> they are not the most pressing needs in general. We have ways to work >> around these things but It would be much nicer to have a Racket native >> solution. I have numbered the list but they are really in no particular >> order. >> >> 1. Libsodium - We need to do some sophisticated encryption and web of trust >> stuff. See earlier comments on this list by Tony Garnock-Jones. >> >> 2. ICE NAT traversal - We need to do this and do it well. Currently we are >> working on using FFI to either PJNATH or libnice. A pure Racket >> implementation would be great. It should probably be combined with Tony G's >> efforts on UPnP and NAT-PMP, https://github.com/tonyg/racket-nat-traversal. >> This is an area which has suffered greatly from a lack of the right people >> coming together and agreeing on a good standard. ICE is a method for >> prioritizing and selecting from multiple competing standards which may each >> be the best choice in different circumstances. UPnP and NAT-PMP are only >> partial solutions for us and we really need STUN and TURN as well. >> >> 3. Advanced fountain codes - For example, https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.09125. >> I haven't seen a Racket native library for basic Reed-Solomon erasure codes >> either. >> >> 4. A DSL alternative to GraphViz - see my other message. >> >> 5. #lang R or some other method to combine Racket and R - We need to go to R >> for computational work because that's what is trusted in the field. >> >> James >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Racket Users" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > > -- > http://www.apgwoz.com > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Racket Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
