Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Dexter Lagan]

  I put my foot in my mouth again, it's working. I must have had something
else disabled. I clearly remember not being able to make the cursor 'jump'
around expressions.

Dex

On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 9:16 PM Sorawee Porncharoenwase <
sorawee.pw...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have debugging disabled, but my parenthesis highlighting is NOT
> disabled. Are we talking about the same parenthesis highlighting? Can you
> attach the screenshot of this "parenthesis highlighting is also disabled"
> to the mailing list?
>
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 12:36 AM Dexter Lagan 
> wrote:
>
>>   There’s one thing I noticed: if debugging is disabled, then parenthesis
>> highlighting is also disabled (as well as other visual aids, if I remember
>> well?). The editor also feels faster because of this, but navigating
>> parentheses becomes slightly more tedious without it.
>>
>> Dex
>>
>> On Apr 25, 2020, at 3:25 PM, sleepnova  wrote:
>>
>> 
>> That may help to reduce misimpression. And plus, maybe append some
>> message to error message to inform user that they can turn on errortrace if
>> they need more detailed debugging information, when errortrace doesn't
>> enabled.
>>
>> To be clarify, what you mentioned is "Preserve errortrace" option, what
>> about "Debugging" option, is it a must enabled option in a non-debugging
>> run?
>>
>> <截圖 2020-04-25 下午9.22.20.png>
>>
>>
>> Sorawee Porncharoenwase  於 2020年4月25日 週六
>> 下午8:17寫道：
>>
>>> It could go either way, no? I've also heard a lot of people complaining
>>> that debugging Racket programs is difficult because the stack trace is not
>>> useful, and this is because they use the command-line version which doesn't
>>> have errortrace enabled (by default).
>>>
>>> Perhaps what you really are complaining is that the option to
>>> enable/disable errortrace is not easily discoverable. Would it help if at:
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>
>>> the text is changed from `racket, with debugging` to `racket, with
>>> debugging (slower)`. And the texts are linkified so that when `racket` is
>>> clicked, it leads you to the non-detailed language setting, and when `with
>>> debugging (slower)` is clicked, it leads you to the detailed language
>>> setting?
>>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 3:51 AM Liwei Chou  wrote:
>>>
 Thanks Dexter,

 Yes, now I know it’s due to the debugging and tracing configuration.
 After turn off debugging and profiling, it becomes.

 cpu time: 20 real time: 20 gc time: 0

 If disable Preserve stacktrace also, I got.

 cpu time: 7 real time: 7 gc time: 0

 Which is pretty decent, 16x acceleration.

 It's not a problem for me now. However, this behavior may give some new
 users the wrong impression that the language may not be very efficient,
 which may make some people choose not to continue trying it.

 From the perspective of increasing adoption and reducing barriers, it's
 not a good thing.

 If Racket team can consider making normal run and debug run using
 different default settings, which conventional development environments
 usually do, that can easily solve this problem.

 Dexter Lagan於 2020年4月25日星期六 UTC+8下午5時17分31秒寫道：
>
> Hi Liwei,
>
>   I believe disabling debugging and tracing does accelerate the
> evaluation quite a bit from inside DrRacket. On my system, it seems to be
> running my code at the same speed as the main racket binary.
>
> Dex
>
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 .

>>>
>>
>> --
>> - sleepnova
>> 呼叫小黃創辦人 & CEO
>>
>> --
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>> 
>> .
>>
>>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Sorawee Porncharoenwase]

I have debugging disabled, but my parenthesis highlighting is NOT disabled.
Are we talking about the same parenthesis highlighting? Can you attach the
screenshot of this "parenthesis highlighting is also disabled" to the
mailing list?

On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 12:36 AM Dexter Lagan  wrote:

>   There’s one thing I noticed: if debugging is disabled, then parenthesis
> highlighting is also disabled (as well as other visual aids, if I remember
> well?). The editor also feels faster because of this, but navigating
> parentheses becomes slightly more tedious without it.
>
> Dex
>
> On Apr 25, 2020, at 3:25 PM, sleepnova  wrote:
>
> 
> That may help to reduce misimpression. And plus, maybe append some message
> to error message to inform user that they can turn on errortrace if they
> need more detailed debugging information, when errortrace doesn't enabled.
>
> To be clarify, what you mentioned is "Preserve errortrace" option, what
> about "Debugging" option, is it a must enabled option in a non-debugging
> run?
>
> <截圖 2020-04-25 下午9.22.20.png>
>
>
> Sorawee Porncharoenwase  於 2020年4月25日 週六
> 下午8:17寫道：
>
>> It could go either way, no? I've also heard a lot of people complaining
>> that debugging Racket programs is difficult because the stack trace is not
>> useful, and this is because they use the command-line version which doesn't
>> have errortrace enabled (by default).
>>
>> Perhaps what you really are complaining is that the option to
>> enable/disable errortrace is not easily discoverable. Would it help if at:
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>> the text is changed from `racket, with debugging` to `racket, with
>> debugging (slower)`. And the texts are linkified so that when `racket` is
>> clicked, it leads you to the non-detailed language setting, and when `with
>> debugging (slower)` is clicked, it leads you to the detailed language
>> setting?
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 3:51 AM Liwei Chou  wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Dexter,
>>>
>>> Yes, now I know it’s due to the debugging and tracing configuration.
>>> After turn off debugging and profiling, it becomes.
>>>
>>> cpu time: 20 real time: 20 gc time: 0
>>>
>>> If disable Preserve stacktrace also, I got.
>>>
>>> cpu time: 7 real time: 7 gc time: 0
>>>
>>> Which is pretty decent, 16x acceleration.
>>>
>>> It's not a problem for me now. However, this behavior may give some new
>>> users the wrong impression that the language may not be very efficient,
>>> which may make some people choose not to continue trying it.
>>>
>>> From the perspective of increasing adoption and reducing barriers, it's
>>> not a good thing.
>>>
>>> If Racket team can consider making normal run and debug run using
>>> different default settings, which conventional development environments
>>> usually do, that can easily solve this problem.
>>>
>>> Dexter Lagan於 2020年4月25日星期六 UTC+8下午5時17分31秒寫道：

 Hi Liwei,

   I believe disabling debugging and tracing does accelerate the
 evaluation quite a bit from inside DrRacket. On my system, it seems to be
 running my code at the same speed as the main racket binary.

 Dex

>>> --
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>>> Groups "Racket Users" group.
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>>> an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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>>> 
>>> .
>>>
>>
>
> --
> - sleepnova
> 呼叫小黃創辦人 & CEO
>
> --
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> 
> .
>
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Dexter Lagan]

  There’s one thing I noticed: if debugging is disabled, then parenthesis 
highlighting is also disabled (as well as other visual aids, if I remember 
well?). The editor also feels faster because of this, but navigating 
parentheses becomes slightly more tedious without it.

Dex

> On Apr 25, 2020, at 3:25 PM, sleepnova  wrote:
> 
> 
> That may help to reduce misimpression. And plus, maybe append some message to 
> error message to inform user that they can turn on errortrace if they need 
> more detailed debugging information, when errortrace doesn't enabled.
> 
> To be clarify, what you mentioned is "Preserve errortrace" option, what about 
> "Debugging" option, is it a must enabled option in a non-debugging run?
> 
> <截圖 2020-04-25 下午9.22.20.png>
> 
> 
> Sorawee Porncharoenwase  於 2020年4月25日 週六 下午8:17寫道：
>> It could go either way, no? I've also heard a lot of people complaining that 
>> debugging Racket programs is difficult because the stack trace is not 
>> useful, and this is because they use the command-line version which doesn't 
>> have errortrace enabled (by default). 
>> 
>> Perhaps what you really are complaining is that the option to enable/disable 
>> errortrace is not easily discoverable. Would it help if at:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> the text is changed from `racket, with debugging` to `racket, with debugging 
>> (slower)`. And the texts are linkified so that when `racket` is clicked, it 
>> leads you to the non-detailed language setting, and when `with debugging 
>> (slower)` is clicked, it leads you to the detailed language setting?
>> 
>> On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 3:51 AM Liwei Chou  wrote:
>>> Thanks Dexter,
>>> 
>>> Yes, now I know it’s due to the debugging and tracing configuration. After 
>>> turn off debugging and profiling, it becomes.
>>> 
>>> cpu time: 20 real time: 20 gc time: 0
>>> 
>>> If disable Preserve stacktrace also, I got.
>>> 
>>> cpu time: 7 real time: 7 gc time: 0
>>> 
>>> Which is pretty decent, 16x acceleration.
>>> 
>>> It's not a problem for me now. However, this behavior may give some new 
>>> users the wrong impression that the language may not be very efficient, 
>>> which may make some people choose not to continue trying it.
>>> 
>>> From the perspective of increasing adoption and reducing barriers, it's not 
>>> a good thing.
>>> 
>>> If Racket team can consider making normal run and debug run using different 
>>> default settings, which conventional development environments usually do, 
>>> that can easily solve this problem.
>>> 
>>> Dexter Lagan於 2020年4月25日星期六 UTC+8下午5時17分31秒寫道：
 
 Hi Liwei,
 
   I believe disabling debugging and tracing does accelerate the evaluation 
 quite a bit from inside DrRacket. On my system, it seems to be running my 
 code at the same speed as the main racket binary.
 
 Dex
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 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 
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>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/cb5e4fa5-2766-4242-aff5-8933bee637c6%40googlegroups.com.
> 
> 
> -- 
> - sleepnova
> 呼叫小黃創辦人 & CEO
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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Liwei Chou]

Similar discussion here.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/racket-users/WvThwc98kMU

Sorawee Porncharoenwase於 2020年4月26日星期日 UTC+8上午2時03分13秒寫道：
>
> I like the idea of adding a "with debugging" to the banner when a program 
>> is run in DrRacket, but I´m not sure it is possible. 
>>
>
> It current exists already! The screenshot I attached above is from the 
> actual DrRacket when debugging is enabled.
>  
>
>> (It would be even better if the user can click it and go to the help page 
>> about the configuration of the language). But I'm not sure it is possible.
>>
>
> Right, and that's my proposal. Make it a link, put the word "slow" there 
> to draw attention. I think it would be nice if the language configuration 
> control is self-explanatory so that we don't need the help page.
>  
>
>> Another possibility is to have two "Run" buttons, a normal "Run" button 
>> and a "Run fast" button. The problem is that too many buttons make the UI 
>> confusing for beginners.
>>
>
> I considered this possibility too and reached the same conclusion. Also, 
> I'm not sure if multiple "Run" buttons make sense for every language in 
> Racket.
>  
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Sorawee Porncharoenwase]

>
> I like the idea of adding a "with debugging" to the banner when a program
> is run in DrRacket, but I´m not sure it is possible.
>

It current exists already! The screenshot I attached above is from the
actual DrRacket when debugging is enabled.


> (It would be even better if the user can click it and go to the help page
> about the configuration of the language). But I'm not sure it is possible.
>

Right, and that's my proposal. Make it a link, put the word "slow" there to
draw attention. I think it would be nice if the language configuration
control is self-explanatory so that we don't need the help page.


> Another possibility is to have two "Run" buttons, a normal "Run" button
> and a "Run fast" button. The problem is that too many buttons make the UI
> confusing for beginners.
>

I considered this possibility too and reached the same conclusion. Also,
I'm not sure if multiple "Run" buttons make sense for every language in
Racket.

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Sorawee Porncharoenwase]

It could go either way, no? I've also heard a lot of people complaining
that debugging Racket programs is difficult because the stack trace is not
useful, and this is because they use the command-line version which doesn't
have errortrace enabled (by default).

Perhaps what you really are complaining is that the option to
enable/disable errortrace is not easily discoverable. Would it help if at:

[image: Screen Shot 2020-04-25 at 05.11.29.png]

the text is changed from `racket, with debugging` to `racket, with
debugging (slower)`. And the texts are linkified so that when `racket` is
clicked, it leads you to the non-detailed language setting, and when `with
debugging (slower)` is clicked, it leads you to the detailed language
setting?

On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 3:51 AM Liwei Chou  wrote:

> Thanks Dexter,
>
> Yes, now I know it’s due to the debugging and tracing configuration. After
> turn off debugging and profiling, it becomes.
>
> cpu time: 20 real time: 20 gc time: 0
>
> If disable Preserve stacktrace also, I got.
>
> cpu time: 7 real time: 7 gc time: 0
>
> Which is pretty decent, 16x acceleration.
>
> It's not a problem for me now. However, this behavior may give some new
> users the wrong impression that the language may not be very efficient,
> which may make some people choose not to continue trying it.
>
> From the perspective of increasing adoption and reducing barriers, it's
> not a good thing.
>
> If Racket team can consider making normal run and debug run using
> different default settings, which conventional development environments
> usually do, that can easily solve this problem.
>
> Dexter Lagan於 2020年4月25日星期六 UTC+8下午5時17分31秒寫道：
>>
>> Hi Liwei,
>>
>>   I believe disabling debugging and tracing does accelerate the
>> evaluation quite a bit from inside DrRacket. On my system, it seems to be
>> running my code at the same speed as the main racket binary.
>>
>> Dex
>>
> --
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> 
> .
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Liwei Chou]

Thanks Dexter,

Yes, now I know it’s due to the debugging and tracing configuration. After 
turn off debugging and profiling, it becomes.

cpu time: 20 real time: 20 gc time: 0

If disable Preserve stacktrace also, I got.

cpu time: 7 real time: 7 gc time: 0

Which is pretty decent, 16x acceleration.

It's not a problem for me now. However, this behavior may give some new 
users the wrong impression that the language may not be very efficient, 
which may make some people choose not to continue trying it.

>From the perspective of increasing adoption and reducing barriers, it's not 
a good thing.

If Racket team can consider making normal run and debug run using different 
default settings, which conventional development environments usually do, 
that can easily solve this problem.

Dexter Lagan於 2020年4月25日星期六 UTC+8下午5時17分31秒寫道：
>
> Hi Liwei,
>
>   I believe disabling debugging and tracing does accelerate the evaluation 
> quite a bit from inside DrRacket. On my system, it seems to be running my 
> code at the same speed as the main racket binary.
>
> Dex
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Dexter Lagan]

Hi Liwei,

  I believe disabling debugging and tracing does accelerate the evaluation
quite a bit from inside DrRacket. On my system, it seems to be running my
code at the same speed as the main racket binary.

Dex

On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 7:35 AM Liwei Chou  wrote:

> Dexter Lagan於 2019年7月22日星期一 UTC+8下午4時52分42秒寫道
>>
>>   From my perspective the only barrier of entry to Racket is the
>> documentation: it is very clear, detailed and well-written, but to certain
>> of my students they can also be quite obscure, especially to those who
>> don’t have comp-sci background and those whose first language isn’t
>> English. The best example is the few pages about continuations. For quite a
>> while I could not understand what they were about from the Racket docs, and
>> it took quite a bit of web crawling to find meaningful examples of their
>> use. I also found the pages about macros lacking simple examples, and it’s
>> not until Beautiful Racket that I finally found very basic uses.
>>
>
> I agree with Dexter's opinion about documentation.
>
> I was reading "The Racket Guide" and found it too verbose for a newcomer
> with some programming experience. Then I discovered "Teach Yourself
> Racket", which is easy to read and I'm really enjoy.
>
> https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~plragde/flaneries/TYR/
>
> I strongly recommend to include "Teach Yourself Racket" in the beginner's
> guide section of Racket 's official website. Or produce some more materials
> like that.
>
> Another aspect is about the tooling.
>
> Stephen helpful forwarded my feedback here.
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/racket-users/PftpYnJt49c/2abSsQOYAgAJ
>
> I just quote here. A little bit about my journey as a newbie.
>
> When I started to learn Racket, due to the slow startup time and huge
> memory consumption of DrRacket, the overall impression given to me was that
> it’s very inefficient.
>
> After done some micro-benchmark, it did show that it did not perform well,
> and It did make me hesitate. *(barrier for beginners)*
> But I still want to try it, because I am very interested in its
> expressiveness. And I’m happy to find out it’s actually quite fast.
>
> The micro-benchmark I ran is.
>
> > (time (for ([i (in-range 1000)])
>   (void)))
> cpu time: 115 real time: 115 gc time: 0
>
> (Now I know it’s due to the debugging stuff...)
> Turn out in DrRacket, it’s about 16x slower than in Racket REPL.
>
> However, there isn't a convenient way to separate normal build/run from
> debug build/run, which conventional development environments usually do.
>
> My point is, the impression of this language is not very efficient, which
> is bad, and will scare some people out. Which is a barrier also. It would
> be better if not the case.
>
> --
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> 
> .
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Liwei Chou]

Dexter Lagan於 2019年7月22日星期一 UTC+8下午4時52分42秒寫道
>
>   From my perspective the only barrier of entry to Racket is the 
> documentation: it is very clear, detailed and well-written, but to certain 
> of my students they can also be quite obscure, especially to those who 
> don’t have comp-sci background and those whose first language isn’t 
> English. The best example is the few pages about continuations. For quite a 
> while I could not understand what they were about from the Racket docs, and 
> it took quite a bit of web crawling to find meaningful examples of their 
> use. I also found the pages about macros lacking simple examples, and it’s 
> not until Beautiful Racket that I finally found very basic uses. 
>

I agree with Dexter's opinion about documentation.

I was reading "The Racket Guide" and found it too verbose for a newcomer 
with some programming experience. Then I discovered "Teach Yourself 
Racket", which is easy to read and I'm really enjoy.

https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~plragde/flaneries/TYR/

I strongly recommend to include "Teach Yourself Racket" in the beginner's 
guide section of Racket 's official website. Or produce some more materials 
like that.

Another aspect is about the tooling.

Stephen helpful forwarded my feedback here.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/racket-users/PftpYnJt49c/2abSsQOYAgAJ

I just quote here. A little bit about my journey as a newbie.

When I started to learn Racket, due to the slow startup time and huge 
memory consumption of DrRacket, the overall impression given to me was that 
it’s very inefficient.

After done some micro-benchmark, it did show that it did not perform well, 
and It did make me hesitate. *(barrier for beginners)*
But I still want to try it, because I am very interested in its 
expressiveness. And I’m happy to find out it’s actually quite fast.

The micro-benchmark I ran is.

> (time (for ([i (in-range 1000)])
  (void)))
cpu time: 115 real time: 115 gc time: 0

(Now I know it’s due to the debugging stuff...)
Turn out in DrRacket, it’s about 16x slower than in Racket REPL.

However, there isn't a convenient way to separate normal build/run from 
debug build/run, which conventional development environments usually do.

My point is, the impression of this language is not very efficient, which 
is bad, and will scare some people out. Which is a barrier also. It would 
be better if not the case.

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 02:59:03AM -0700, Jérôme Martin wrote:
> On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 9:39:08 PM UTC+2, Atlas Atlas wrote:
> > For example men in general more aggressive then women, they also pursue 
> different social goals. You cannot ignore this, or blame the men for what 
> they are. You also cannot ignore the fact that people in general driven by 
> their sexuality.
> 
> 
> This kind of idea is the heart of the problem I'm trying to highlight.
> Recent (and old) studies show that considering men and women as having 
> different motivations driven by their gender is false and was created by 
> most modern societies as a way to justify social differences by finding a 
> fake reason in "the laws of nature".

There are significant differences between man and women, and between 
their interests, driven by societh ane evolution.

But they are statistical differences and should never be considered 
when dealing with individuals.  Many of the variations within groups 
are greater than the variations between groups.  You have to judge 
individuals as individuals, ane not as average members of a group.  
Certainly this is so for variations in those aptitudes related to 
the use of Scheme.

> 
> In the beginning of IT, writing computer programs was considered a low 
> value job and was assigned to women (as always).

This was so in the 1950's.

 Then men started to 
> realize that it might be an important task after all, and got rid of women 
> as soon as they found out it was some kind of "engineering", therefore a 
> highest valued job. Barriers were closed, women were left behind.

By the 1960's women in computing were relegated to being typists.

> 
> If a woman wants to work in IT today, she has to:
> - Work twice as hard
> - Let men get the rewards from her work
> - Bear with the fact that every time she says something in a meeting, a man 
> will repeat it and get more traction
> - If she has a blog or a social media account, bear with sexual harassment 
> and rape threats every single day
> - Bear with more aggressive code reviews
> - Accept to earn less money and don't get promoted
> - Be told that she was not able to "seize opportunities"
> 
> When a woman tough enough to cope with this comes into an open source 
> community.. guess what?
> She faces the same issues!

Unless she disguises herself by using a male or gender-ambiguous name.
Online existence by itself doesn't reveal her gender.
She shouldn't have to do this.

...
...

> 
> Enough of this, please.

Sad, but currently true.  The last thing we should do is to try to 
become more "inclusive" by appealing to stereotypes.  We can instead 
treat everyone based on the merit of technical contributions and 
questions, and curtail attacks based on the usual list of 
prejudices.

-- hendrik

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Jérôme Martin]

On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 9:39:08 PM UTC+2, Atlas Atlas wrote:
> For example men in general more aggressive then women, they also pursue 
different social goals. You cannot ignore this, or blame the men for what 
they are. You also cannot ignore the fact that people in general driven by 
their sexuality.


This kind of idea is the heart of the problem I'm trying to highlight.
Recent (and old) studies show that considering men and women as having 
different motivations driven by their gender is false and was created by 
most modern societies as a way to justify social differences by finding a 
fake reason in "the laws of nature".

In the beginning of IT, writing computer programs was considered a low 
value job and was assigned to women (as always). Then men started to 
realize that it might be an important task after all, and got rid of women 
as soon as they found out it was some kind of "engineering", therefore a 
highest valued job. Barriers were closed, women were left behind.

If a woman wants to work in IT today, she has to:
- Work twice as hard
- Let men get the rewards from her work
- Bear with the fact that every time she says something in a meeting, a man 
will repeat it and get more traction
- If she has a blog or a social media account, bear with sexual harassment 
and rape threats every single day
- Bear with more aggressive code reviews
- Accept to earn less money and don't get promoted
- Be told that she was not able to "seize opportunities"

When a woman tough enough to cope with this comes into an open source 
community.. guess what?
She faces the same issues!

After having experienced all that, will she accept to be told that "it's 
natural", that "men and women have different social goals", that "people 
are driven by their sexuality" ?
I'm a man, but I couldn't accept that if it happened to me. I couldn't 
accept to see the violence perpetuated on me justified by my gender and 
some kind of "law of nature".

I got into IT because I love programming and solving problems. But I must 
never forget that I got here easily because I'm a man. I must accept that I 
benefited from some kind of artificial privilege.
This is not a blame on me, but a responsibility I must take to make sure 
that I can help people who don't benefit from such privilege.

This is why saying "look, we are open" will never be enough.
Companies which say they are "open" are the same which say that they fired 
this woman because "she didn't fit well", "she didn't have the right 
spirit", "she didn't come to after-work parties because she can't take 
jokes".
"Look, it's not our fault, she is the one not being open enough".

Enough of this, please.

Racket is one of the communities in which I feel the most at home, because 
of threads like this one. Because people actually take the time to think 
about what we are doing collectively and question our direction every day.
I am confident in Racket to be the perfect community to experiment new ways 
of being an open source community. I am confident in Racket to be exactly 
the playing grounds in which we can differentiate ourselves from the 
classic white-male-tech-bro culture that is commonly found in every open 
source groups.

I am NOT trying to make this community restricted to such or such minority 
group. Everyone is welcome. But we need to acknowledge that even if we 
welcome everyone, we don't welcome people with the same story, the same 
background, the same culture.
We tend to think that everyone who come here are by default "a smart guy 
who like lisp languages and has comfortable income". We need to shift from 
that lens to a broader one. We need to accept that some people might come 
here with memories of rape threats and bad racist jokes. We need to 
understand that there is no "one-size-fits-all" way to welcome people in a 
community.

I'd like some parts of the Racket ecosystem to involve women, some part of 
Racket to involve black people...etc
This is in no way a restriction, but an evolution. There is enough room for 
all of us.

Black women programmers are already there. They are just told everywhere 
they go that they don't "seize opportunity".
If we can be the first open source community to prevent that, we can be the 
best open source community that ever was.

Some links to go further (I recommend this wiki to anyone trying to get 
more insight about this issue):
- https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Women-friendly_events
- https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Promotion_to_women
- https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Women-friendly_forums

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Mike G.]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2019 at 02:10:44PM -0400, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
> Atlas, I will have to think more about your message, but I think you're
> right to suggest that FAANGs might be part of a problem

Perhaps I'm the only one, but I had no idea what "FAANG" meant.  For similar 
folks:

"FAANG is an acronym for the market's five most popular and best-performing 
tech stocks, namely Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet’s Google."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp
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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Atlas Atlas]

If we want more women, or any other group of people, involved in Racket, 
the only way to achieve this is to explain to this groups of people why do 
they need Racket.

*(And openness and honesty is a great way to do it)*

And try to answer this question for ourselves.
What Racket can offer to this social group?
And if there is no answer, then perhaps no point in marketing something 
that this group of people does not need or want.

What my experience says, any social groups based on general 
similarities(gender, skin color) as a groups interested not in many things 
at all.
They also act very aggressive not so to other groups but to individuals of 
any king.
Because individual is what conceptually opposes to any group.

And I honestly believe that it is individuals who are interested in Racket.
It is individuals to whom Racket can offer something.

Therefore, I believe that to individuals we need advertise Racket, not to 
groups.

Individuals may face different barriers, but I imagine very rarely 
associated with they gender.
The main barrier is they a not yet a part of Racketeers group, if we a 
talking about community.

It is crucial for small projects to have place where newbies can go, ask 
silly questions, write stupid things, and get wise guidance.
And mailing list is something that younger generation even don't know to 
exist.
So it will be nice to have at least community forum in this regard.


четверг, 25 июля 2019 г., 21:10:49 UTC+3 пользователь Neil Van Dyke написал:

> but I think you're right to suggest that FAANGs might be part of a 
> problem. 
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Atlas Atlas]

It is crucial to understand that "lowering barriers" can mean different 
even opposite things.
You can lower barrier by helping someone to learn.
And you can actually "lower barrier" by diminishing the goal.


And when we talking about social interaction we must acknowledge that 
people a different, and the is at lest three ways to deal with this 
difference, respect it, try to make everyone the same, or respect only some 
differences of some groups.
For example men in general more aggressive then women, they also pursue 
different social goals. You cannot ignore this, or blame the men for what 
they are. You also cannot ignore the fact that people in general driven by 
their sexuality.
My personal answer, first step after nip off violence is to educate people 
on their differences so they can build respect for each other.
But this is not of course task for programming language community, it is 
just something that must be taken in to account.


And teaching is whole another problem.

1. For different people learning something takes different effort, 
sometimes crucially different.

So different people require different teaching approaches. And the metric 
is more complex then just easy/hard duality.
But even this simple metric emerge a lot of problems.


2. Some people unable to learn some things no matter how hard they try.

So the goal must be described in honest way. So people do not build false 
expectations.


четверг, 25 июля 2019 г., 20:51:01 UTC+3 пользователь Atlas Atlas написал:
>
> I never said that lowering barriers is lying or insulting.
>
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Neil Van Dyke]

Atlas, I will have to think more about your message, but I think you're 
right to suggest that FAANGs might be part of a problem.  For example, 
see yesterday's outreach email from a FAANG (quoted at end of this 
email), posted as an apparent diversity initiative, to students of a 
big-name CS department, inviting them to a "10-week workshop series", to 
prep for (IMHO: submit to, and game by playing to the metrics) the 
company's recruiting hazing process and supposed metrics.


(Such hazing processes were not a thing when I got my first software 
engineering internship, before FAANGs.  Perhaps coincidentally, half the 
engineers at my internship were women, and they were all highly-skilled 
and accomplished, doing impressive things, and had the same prestigious 
responsibilities and recognition as the men did (though executive, 
marketing, and field sales were very different stories, unfortunately).  
Later, in grad school, in a "gender issues in CS" interest group, I 
learned there were some problems other places.  Then I started to see 
various kinds of unwelcoming and barriers in academia, after I switched 
universities (regrettably, moving from a school known for being 
warm-fuzzy, to one known for egos and sharp elbows).  At the start of 
dotcoms, the only software company I recall being known for things like 
puzzle interviews was also the company that was later most cited by 
female interns for sexism among employees.  Just at that time, the 
dotcom gold rush started, and IPO-driven VCs and 20yo founders seemed to 
institute brogramming culture.  It seemed a Californian veneer variation 
on the infamous 1980s coked-up Wall Street culture, which needed 
aggressive worker drones for their earlier version of dotcoms' "move 
fast and break things" -- which has turned out to be a euphemism for 
grabbing money and power, by being the most irresponsible. Fortunately, 
individuals are better than the aggressive worker drones some companies 
have seemed to want, but individuals can only do so much about a 
top-down culture, so I'm criticizing the companies here, not the 
individuals trapped in it.)


In what I see as some degree of contrast, the Racket community overall 
(including at the top) seems to care genuinely about being thoughtfully 
constructive, we already have some diversity of perspectives (and some 
of the talk, including my own, sometimes sounds unfamiliar, and maybe 
wrong, to some others, perhaps *because* of that diversity), and I get 
the impression we want more diversity.  Collectively and individually, 
we still have many things to figure out, in how to welcome and support 
people, but we seem to have genuine and good intentions, and have made 
some progress already.  Still, I'm sure people can point to some 
problems that are obvious to them, but that others of us (including 
myself) didn't really notice or appreciate as much as we should.


Maybe Racket needs a better channel for talking about such things, and 
figuring out how to get good movement on them.  Maybe starting with a 
different email list, with some guidelines?



As possible "comic relief" (I try to have a sense of humor about 
upsetting things), here's yesterday's FAANG hazing outreach:



Want to boost your readiness for [Company] technical interviews?

This Fall, we're expanding our Above & Beyond Computer Science (ABCS) 
program to Atlanta, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, and 
Washington D.C. to build a diverse pipeline of future software engineers.


Participants collaborate with peers and [Company] software engineers 
in a 10-week workshop series to help increase their competitiveness 
for their coding interviews. You’ll gain in-depth and applied practice 
on common interview topics, learn interview best practices, and 
collect rigorous preparatory materials to unlock their full potential.


Hear from one of our past participants:

“The ABCS program gave me the extra nudge that I needed to strengthen 
my technical interview skills. The program was an absolute success and 
coincidentally, I will be starting at [Company] later this year as a 
Software Engineer Intern and I can directly say that it was a result 
from the lessons and valuable skills I learned at ABCS.” - Lauren L, 
ABCS Boston, 2018


Last fall, 76% of our program participants landed competitive summer 
internships or jobs in tech.


Are you ready to apply to a software engineering internship or 
full-time job and want to go above and beyond to set yourself up for 
success?


Apply for an ABCS program near you: [...]


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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Atlas Atlas]

I never said that lowering barriers is lying or insulting.

I say that lowering barriers by lying (by making an impression instead of a 
reality 
demonstration) is really bad way to go.

If there is actual barriers, the work must be putted to improve on them, 
and not to improve on showing that this barriers don't exist.

There is also some barriers that you newer should break, for example people 
must be actually interested in writing computer programs in some way at 
least.
And regarding to this message must(this is just my opinion) be clear - "we 
welcome anyone who want to learn". 
- "This is how Racket looks like"  
- "This is how community looks like"
- "This is how contribution is happening"
- "This is main people behind the project"
Openness is helping a lot.

People clearly can see when what showed to them is real deal or marketing.
I really like RacketCon videos in this regard, they a honest. And honesty 
is the way to build social relations.

Unfortunately, I cannot up this discussion to scientific proof level 
because this is not practical for me (It takes big 
effort for me to write in English).
And perhaps will be impropriety thing to do.

My personal wish is to see some way to internationalize Racket...
If someone will want to translate site or documentation to other languages, 
what 
it might look like?



четверг, 25 июля 2019 г., 20:02:01 UTC+3 пользователь Matthew Butterick 
написал:
>
> Mr. Atlas, since this seems to be only your second contribution to the 
> racket-users list (the first was yesterday) I'm reluctant to impute much 
> weight to your views, since I can't verify that there's a sincere human 
> behind them. 
>
> In any case, I can agree with you on the value of education. But the idea 
> that lowering barriers is equivalent to "ruining community", "lying to 
> people", and "insult[ing] people who are already in the project" — no, I 
> don't agree, and those ideas are inconsistent with everything I've learned 
> about how Racket operates.
>
>
> On Jul 25, 2019, at 8:58 AM, Atlas Atlas  > wrote:
>
> 1. To increase inclusiveness of some group of people, you educate people 
> from this group on the subject of lisp racket computer science etc.
> 2. By lowering "barriers" you just welcome someone who doesn't care for 
> the project and ruining community from inside.
> 3. By making a show about what project is NOT, you lying to people you 
> want to attract, and insult people who are already in the project.
>
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Matthew Butterick]

Mr. Atlas, since this seems to be only your second contribution to the 
racket-users list (the first was yesterday) I'm reluctant to impute much weight 
to your views, since I can't verify that there's a sincere human behind them. 

In any case, I can agree with you on the value of education. But the idea that 
lowering barriers is equivalent to "ruining community", "lying to people", and 
"insult[ing] people who are already in the project" — no, I don't agree, and 
those ideas are inconsistent with everything I've learned about how Racket 
operates.


> On Jul 25, 2019, at 8:58 AM, Atlas Atlas  wrote:
> 
> 1. To increase inclusiveness of some group of people, you educate people from 
> this group on the subject of lisp racket computer science etc.
> 2. By lowering "barriers" you just welcome someone who doesn't care for the 
> project and ruining community from inside.
> 3. By making a show about what project is NOT, you lying to people you want 
> to attract, and insult people who are already in the project.
> 

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Atlas Atlas]

1. To increase inclusiveness of some group of people, you educate people 
from this group on the subject of lisp racket computer science etc.
2. By lowering "barriers" you just welcome someone who doesn't care for the 
project and ruining community from inside.
3. By making a show about what project is NOT, you lying to people you want 
to attract, and insult people who are already in the project.

4. The is no possible reason to counterbalance the inequality, people a not 
equal, from the moment of conception. Society must acknowledge this 
inequality and build hierarchy of competence.
If you want to help uneducated people - educate them. This is the only way 
to fight poverty unemployment and other social problems.
IT communities never was biased on gender and skin color, by "fighting" 
imaginary unfairness you insulting every single programmer in the world. 
And actually creating ground for real racism and chauvinism.

When I first watched RacketCon videos I was surprised by diversity of 
people interested in Racket, this is wonderful people united by they 
passion, and not they genitalia or skin color problems. This is how it 
should be. So I don't think racketeers need such kind of help.

I think that optimization must begin from slowest parts, so, there is 
highly chauvinistic IT corporation like Google Apple Amazon, they 
desperately need such kind of help.
I believe that all social justice forces must be immediately thrown at this 
Real Big problems. You will be able to cure millions of small projects as 
Racket when you get rid of the main problems in Google and Amazon.

среда, 24 июля 2019 г., 12:00:32 UTC+3 пользователь Jérôme Martin написал:

> In my personal life, I'm involved a lot into improving the inclusion of 
> women, black people and other often excluded communities into the 
> technology field.
> From my experience, I'd say one of the most important point is not saying 
> "we are open, just come", but showing it through visual and overall public 
> communication.
> Examples:
> - Show the faces of speakers in conferences, in which we can clearly see 
> that some are black, some are women..etc
> - Explicitly create some Racket events/workshops dedicated to women (this 
> is NOT so called "reverse sexism", please)
> - This is more of a personal feeling, but I think embracing functional 
> programming as "a more feminine way" (because you let the program flow 
> naturally) compared to "imperative programming" (which sound very 
> masculine, in control, by shouting orders to a computer) can also be a way 
> to show Racket is different.
>
> My point is: Since our society is inherently biased and unequal, simply 
> saying you are open is not enough. To really counterbalance the inequality, 
> we need to *actively* reach a different audience.
>

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Jérôme Martin]

Thank you very much Matthew and Neil for those refreshing write-ups!

I'm really glad to see the question of inclusion, diversity (not the 
politically charged American meaning), and overall well-being in an mostly 
online community.

DISCLAIMER: Please take what I'm going to say with a distance. It might be 
shocking for some, or politically inclined/incorrect for some. I am 
dedicated in fighting racism and sexism in my life and everything written 
down below is oriented toward that goal.

In my personal life, I'm involved a lot into improving the inclusion of 
women, black people and other often excluded communities into the 
technology field.
>From my experience, I'd say one of the most important point is not saying 
"we are open, just come", but showing it through visual and overall public 
communication.
Examples:
- Show the faces of speakers in conferences, in which we can clearly see 
that some are black, some are women..etc
- Explicitly create some Racket events/workshops dedicated to women (this 
is NOT so called "reverse sexism", please)
- This is more of a personal feeling, but I think embracing functional 
programming as "a more feminine way" (because you let the program flow 
naturally) compared to "imperative programming" (which sound very 
masculine, in control, by shouting orders to a computer) can also be a way 
to show Racket is different.

My point is: Since our society is inherently biased and unequal, simply 
saying you are open is not enough. To really counterbalance the inequality, 
we need to *actively* reach a different audience.

I know some of you don't agree with that because it feels "political". It 
feels like Racket is taking side in a fight. But everything in life, 
especially big human communities, are inherently political, whether they 
want it or not. If we don't side for women, for black people, for excluded 
people, we automatically side for the dominators.

This is my personal point of view, it has been stated now as an advice in 
the direction I personally feel is right for any community trying to 
improve its diversity. You are now free to throw stones at me and happily 
share your disagreement.

I am a thousand times thankful for all that the Racket community has 
achieved so far. Thank you for making the best language in the world, not 
only for it's technological background, but especially for it's community 
and the values of freedom of speech and expression it promotes.

I look forward to seeing this community grow and I am happy to be a part of 
it.

Jérôme

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Neil Van Dyke]

Matthew Butterick wrote on 7/21/19 4:46 PM:

But as was true for a lot of kids like me during that era, computers were a 
refuge. They never judged me. They rewarded my curiosity.


There's a complementary acceptance component to the microcomputer&online 
revolutions, which I think are relevant to Racket/tech community 
inclusiveness...


As people first started to get online, and find social-heavy topical 
interest circles, it disproportionately attracted people who were 
diverse in ways that weren't accepted as much in "real life".


For example, in some techie social circles, that we knew of, there were 
quite a lot of people who were eventually open online about being gay 
(when that wasn't OK where they lived), or being transgender (before 
most of society even knew that existed), and it was fine -- whether 
people were there for the topic/socializing alone, or because they felt 
drawn to an Island of Misfit Toys themselves.


Right now, most of the world is running software some of those people 
helped write, when society didn't accept them at the time. And one of 
them, a person who seemed to have a bit of anxiety, and perhaps was 
socializing online because of that, turned out to start a groundbreaking 
technology most of the world is now using.  Another one, who was a very 
nerdy girl who sought out other nerds, has since become a celebrated 
entrepreneur you've probably heard of.  And another woman, who was a 
serious math nerd, who is currently giving tech industry conference 
talks on big things.  And people all over the world, including at least 
one who later turned out to be nobility in their original country, but 
was somewhat restricted due to being female.  (Younger people with early 
online access were often children of university employees or computer 
industry people, or of wealthy classes who could go all-out on the 
child's home computer, mixed in with adult computer nerds.)  And one 
child actor would occasionally drop by one group, as a typical nerdy 
computer kid in real life, before most people could Tweet at 
celebrities' PR personae.  Fortunately, for parochial me, everyone spoke 
English.


There was also not yet things like Facebook presences (perpetuating 
primary/high school looks/popularity contests well into adulthood), so 
we often didn't even know what people looked like, and just took people 
on the merits of what they said.  Which resulted in some funny 
revelations, like the person you visualized like another stereotypical 
computer nerd, who turned out to be very conventionally attractive and 
charismatic (and who, of course, became an executive at a prominent 
dotcom).  Or the exceptionally kind and thoughtful person, who it turned 
out looked like what one might've thought (with one's real-world 
prejudices and stereotypes) was some scruffy metalhead.  (Which makes me 
think contemporary social media would be healthier and more beneficial, 
if people didn't post photos of themselves, compete for "influencer" 
funding, etc.)


Today, now that I'm in my 40s, it turns out that half of the American 
techies I socialize with frequently identify as some flavor of 
conservative -- which I would've found alarming years ago (I identify as 
very liberal/progressive, in the American sense).  One, for example, is 
very smart and thoughtful, seems like a great family person, and seems 
implicitly totally comfortable with gay/trans/whatever, but will 
frequently rant about what he sees as progressive grandstanding in the 
news.  I still don't agree with him on a lot of what's a problem and 
needs to be said in society right now, and what doesn't, but it turns 
out that conservatives overall are not so bad.


In pre-"social media" online, we sometimes made mistakes (including 
inadvertently being very unwelcoming in some ways, including by myself 
sometimes, I'm still embarrassed to recall), and of course there are 
always human conflicts and dramas, but we learned a lot about what 
communities can be, and that a lot of dumb real-world prejudices outside 
our community exist, and don't have to be that way.


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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Brian Adkins]

On Monday, July 22, 2019 at 1:07:21 PM UTC-4, Caleb Allen wrote:
>
> As an additional data point, I can share my very fast introduction into 
> Racket and the community. You asked for experiences where the community may 
> have made people feel unwelcome, but mine is a positive experience. I share 
> it to perhaps give an angle of what *is* right, and the parts of the 
> racket community which helped me go from an "outsider" to feeling welcome 
> and secure. My brief experience with this community has been wonderful, and 
> I want to contribute to making that experience the norm, if it is not 
> already. [...]
>

Thanks for articulating your thoughts so well Caleb.

Although my recent comments have probably focused more on technical 
aspects, the Racket community was *very* high on my priority list when I 
was looking for my next language. I was appreciative of answers I received 
to questions on the mailing list and/or IRC channel, and it was clear that 
top contributors were (and are) willing to take the time to deal with my 
newbie questions, and that, in turn, inspired me to want to get to the 
point where I could give back in a similar fashion (not quite there yet!).

>From *my* perspective, the Racket community has good *and* long track 
record, and I don't expect the current *hiccup* to change that :) And, if 
others have unfortunately had a worse experience, my sense is that we as a 
community are motivated to change that.

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Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Caleb Allen]

As an additional data point, I can share my very fast introduction into
Racket and the community. You asked for experiences where the community may
have made people feel unwelcome, but mine is a positive experience. I share
it to perhaps give an angle of what *is* right, and the parts of the racket
community which helped me go from an "outsider" to feeling welcome and
secure. My brief experience with this community has been wonderful, and I
want to contribute to making that experience the norm, if it is not already.

A few short months ago I came across The Little Schemer as recommended by a
mentor of mine, and in my subsequent Scheme research came across your
Racket Con videos on Pollen. Your enthusiasm made me feel okay about being
enthusiastic myself! I watched a dozen or so Racket Con talks from as many
speakers. Seeing how enthusiastic and dynamic the speakers were showed me
that it was the entire community, not any single person, pushing this
forward with passion and care. This apparent diversity of people and
opinion was in stark contrast to many of the language communities I'd
studied or participated in up to this point, which I'm sure you could guess.

As others have alluded to, the documentation might have intimidated me (as
any documentation for a new language does), and my foray was instead
through video. When I landed on the racket homepage and saw that Racket
Week was just weeks away in my own city of Salt Lake, I knew I'd have to
go, despite my uneasiness. For context, I attended the University of Utah
in parallel with an internship at a startup, but dropped out after two
years to go full time at the startup. In light of that decision I was
nervous about being back on campus among academics I admired, and I
questioned whether I was really qualified to even attend.

Each day of Racket Week put me more at ease, as I found mutual interests
with other attendees and had interesting conversations that continued after
the week was up. During introductions on day one (in the LOP course), I
took note of people I'd like to pester about interesting things, and the
conversations during off-time and meals had me stumbling into some of the
coolest projects, ideas and passions I've ever heard. The week, for me, was
a resounding success, and I hope to be integrating myself further into the
community as the months and years go by.

>From my perspective, the nature of the language itself may have been the
biggest intimidating factor: there is a long history of very, very smart
people who are very passionate about pushing this forward. Nobody enjoys
making a fool of themselves and my biggest worry was asking a stupid
question or being too unfamiliar with tooling. From the technical
perspective, DrRacket did more for me as a gentle (but powerful)
introduction to Racket than anything else I've used with any language. When
I did encounter problems, the documentation and its ease of access from
DrRacket made my previous documentation experience feel like reading a
thesaurus, when I really wanted an encyclopedia. Racket's tooling is in a
league of its own in terms of usability, and it was not a factor in
deterring me.

I'd echo Dexter's sentiment to add some practical, hard examples somewhere,
aimed at users of C like languages. I'm convinced of the power of LOP now
that I've gotten the full context from Matthias during Racket Week and I
will be using it extensively. But documentation of macros and building my
own language was difficult to reason about on my early encounters, when I
was still fighting the urge to slap curly braces somewhere in my code. I
don't know how that gets solved, because Racket's power was both its draw
as well as what intimidated me.

I may have been lucky in being in the right place at the right time, but I
wanted to voice my appreciation for what has been done so far. I heard
about Racket was less than two months ago and now I feel more enthusiastic
than I have since learning TI-Basic on my TI-84 and sharing games with my
friends in high school. This experience wasn't without a good dose of
anxiety, but making friends in the community made all the difference.

Caleb


On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 2:46 PM Matthew Butterick  wrote:

> I'm not a member of Racket management. But I spend a lot of time using &
> promoting Racket. Most recently, I taught the Beautiful Racket Workshop as
> part of Racket Week 2019.
>
> I care a lot about Racket — the technology, but especially the human
> community that makes it possible.
>
> I've heard from a few people that events before, during, or after Racket
> Week left them questioning Racket's commitment to making everyone feel
> welcome. And to be honest, it wasn't the first time.
>
> This saddens me. It's not consistent with my own values. It's not what I
> want Racket to stand for. I want everyone to feel welcome, wanted, and
> valued.
>
> In a nearby thread, Matthew Flatt talked about the importance of "reducing
> barriers" in a technical sense. But it mat

Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Dexter Lagan]

 First I’d like to express my immense gratitude for your contributions to the 
Racket community. Beautiful Racket greatly enhanced my understanding of 
language-oriented programming and macros in general.

TL;DR: Racket is the most inspiring language and ecosystem I have ever used. I 
use it not just because it does the job, but because I’m having an absolute 
blast writing code in it, something that hasn’t happened to me since uhh.. x86 
macro-assembler, or Pascal. All it needs is a simpler, localized, more 
practical intro page for existing programmers, and lots of promotion. Oh and 
maybe more speed, but it’s fast enough for my use.

  Now, the wall of text:

  From my perspective the only barrier of entry to Racket is the documentation: 
it is very clear, detailed and well-written, but to certain of my students they 
can also be quite obscure, especially to those who don’t have comp-sci 
background and those whose first language isn’t English. The best example is 
the few pages about continuations. For quite a while I could not understand 
what they were about from the Racket docs, and it took quite a bit of web 
crawling to find meaningful examples of their use. I also found the pages about 
macros lacking simple examples, and it’s not until Beautiful Racket that I 
finally found very basic uses.

 My opinion doesn’t count for much, but from my experience and the feedback I 
got from my employees and students, the main Racket site and docs is missing a 
very basic presentation of the language. Something really clear, concise, that 
does not use comp-sci or advanced vocabulary. The best example that comes to my 
mind is say, Go’s tour pages - in 20 languages. I understand there is Matthew’s 
Quick Introduction on the main page, but somehow I’m imagining a smaller, 
quicker ‘batteries included’, practical intro, for programmers familiar with 
other languages :

1) how to read/write from/to a file
2) how to display text on the screen
3) how to use conditionals and loops
4) how to write a function
5) how to compile functions into modules

  The hyperpolyglot.org/lisp ultra concise, parallel presentation of languages 
helped me more than once make sense of a new language. If only Racket had 
something similar for say, C, Java, Python and Racket. That way Python and Java 
programmers (perhaps Racket’s main target in the production env) could get a 
very quick sense of how things work.

  Localisation would also go a long way towards bringing Racket to the world. 
I’m currently in France and Racket is completely unknown here, yet sorely 
needed when I see the slow-motion Java disaster going on in every engineering 
school and every company.

Dex

> On Jul 21, 2019, at 10:46 PM, Matthew Butterick  wrote:
> 
> I'm not a member of Racket management. But I spend a lot of time using & 
> promoting Racket. Most recently, I taught the Beautiful Racket Workshop as 
> part of Racket Week 2019. 
> 
> I care a lot about Racket — the technology, but especially the human 
> community that makes it possible.
> 
> I've heard from a few people that events before, during, or after Racket Week 
> left them questioning Racket's commitment to making everyone feel welcome. 
> And to be honest, it wasn't the first time. 
> 
> This saddens me. It's not consistent with my own values. It's not what I want 
> Racket to stand for. I want everyone to feel welcome, wanted, and valued. 
> 
> In a nearby thread, Matthew Flatt talked about the importance of "reducing 
> barriers" in a technical sense. But it matters in a community sense too, of 
> course. 
> 
> If Racket is putting up social barriers — even unwittingly — that are 
> frustrating newcomers (or existing members) then we ought to be able to hear 
> this with an open mind & heart, and make adjustments. This is our duty as 
> empathetic, moral members of a community.
> 
> I'm not sure what I can do to improve this situation. I'm open to 
> suggestions. I can at least offer the following (I would rather risk looking 
> foolish than doing nothing):
> 
> 
> 1) If you've had an experience where the Racket community made you feel less 
> than totally welcomed, I invite you to add it to this thread, or contact me 
> privately. If you want details of your story shared, in some anonymized way, 
> I can do that. 
> 
> I recognize the irony of making this offer on the racket-users mailing list — 
> those who've had a bad experience are likely long gone. But I also know there 
> are people here who, like me, want to help make Racket better, even on rough 
> days.
> 
> 
> 2) Gently, I suggest that we work together to reduce the volatility of these 
> conversations. I know that some feel that these matters are better handled 
> away from the racket-users list. But this is counterproductive: it amounts to 
> saying that we should feel free to harvest the benefits of 
> Racket-the-technology while avoiding obligations to Racket-the-community. As 
> a matter of logic and ethics, I can't see how

Re: [racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Stephen De Gabrielle]

Thank you.

S.

On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 at 21:46, Matthew Butterick  wrote:

> I'm not a member of Racket management. But I spend a lot of time using &
> promoting Racket. Most recently, I taught the Beautiful Racket Workshop as
> part of Racket Week 2019.
>
> I care a lot about Racket — the technology, but especially the human
> community that makes it possible.
>
> I've heard from a few people that events before, during, or after Racket
> Week left them questioning Racket's commitment to making everyone feel
> welcome. And to be honest, it wasn't the first time.
>
> This saddens me. It's not consistent with my own values. It's not what I
> want Racket to stand for. I want everyone to feel welcome, wanted, and
> valued.
>
> In a nearby thread, Matthew Flatt talked about the importance of "reducing
> barriers" in a technical sense. But it matters in a community sense too, of
> course.
>
> If Racket is putting up social barriers — even unwittingly — that are
> frustrating newcomers (or existing members) then we ought to be able to
> hear this with an open mind & heart, and make adjustments. This is our duty
> as empathetic, moral members of a community.
>
> I'm not sure what I can do to improve this situation. I'm open to
> suggestions. I can at least offer the following (I would rather risk
> looking foolish than doing nothing):
>
>
> 1) If you've had an experience where the Racket community made you feel
> less than totally welcomed, I invite you to add it to this thread, or
> contact me privately. If you want details of your story shared, in some
> anonymized way, I can do that.
>
> I recognize the irony of making this offer on the racket-users mailing
> list — those who've had a bad experience are likely long gone. But I also
> know there are people here who, like me, want to help make Racket better,
> even on rough days.
>
>
> 2) Gently, I suggest that we work together to reduce the volatility of
> these conversations. I know that some feel that these matters are better
> handled away from the racket-users list. But this is counterproductive: it
> amounts to saying that we should feel free to harvest the benefits of
> Racket-the-technology while avoiding obligations to Racket-the-community.
> As a matter of logic and ethics, I can't see how they are divisible.
>
>
> 3) Today, I'm a reasonably well-adjusted adult (or at least my dog thinks
> so). But a long time ago, I was a fat and dorky and smart kid. For years, I
> was physically and verbally bullied at school. It was relentless and
> terrifying. But as was true for a lot of kids like me during that era,
> computers were a refuge. They never judged me. They rewarded my curiosity.
>
> I mention this not to put my experience on a footing with anyone else's.
> But it reminds me that while our contributions to Racket may be public,
> what Racket MEANS to each of us is necessarily private. Right now, there
> are people in our community for whom Racket is a bright spot in difficult
> times. If you haven't been there yet — you will.
>
> To my mind, discussing these matters openly is about preserving the
> paramount virtue of a community based on sharing knowledge: to accept
> everyone just as they are. When we're falling short in this regard, we
> shouldn't avoid these facts, lest we make a virtue of ignorance. Or if we
> can't do this, and people bypass Racket in preference to other communities,
> then we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
>
> With much gratitude to everyone who makes Racket possible.
>
>
> --
> 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.
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> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/8964B1F7-C0A5-44BA-AFE3-FF87E038F3CE%40mbtype.com
> .
>
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[racket-users] on reducing barriers in the Racket community

[Matthew Butterick]

I'm not a member of Racket management. But I spend a lot of time using & 
promoting Racket. Most recently, I taught the Beautiful Racket Workshop as part 
of Racket Week 2019. 

I care a lot about Racket — the technology, but especially the human community 
that makes it possible.

I've heard from a few people that events before, during, or after Racket Week 
left them questioning Racket's commitment to making everyone feel welcome. And 
to be honest, it wasn't the first time. 

This saddens me. It's not consistent with my own values. It's not what I want 
Racket to stand for. I want everyone to feel welcome, wanted, and valued. 

In a nearby thread, Matthew Flatt talked about the importance of "reducing 
barriers" in a technical sense. But it matters in a community sense too, of 
course. 

If Racket is putting up social barriers — even unwittingly — that are 
frustrating newcomers (or existing members) then we ought to be able to hear 
this with an open mind & heart, and make adjustments. This is our duty as 
empathetic, moral members of a community.

I'm not sure what I can do to improve this situation. I'm open to suggestions. 
I can at least offer the following (I would rather risk looking foolish than 
doing nothing):


1) If you've had an experience where the Racket community made you feel less 
than totally welcomed, I invite you to add it to this thread, or contact me 
privately. If you want details of your story shared, in some anonymized way, I 
can do that. 

I recognize the irony of making this offer on the racket-users mailing list — 
those who've had a bad experience are likely long gone. But I also know there 
are people here who, like me, want to help make Racket better, even on rough 
days.


2) Gently, I suggest that we work together to reduce the volatility of these 
conversations. I know that some feel that these matters are better handled away 
from the racket-users list. But this is counterproductive: it amounts to saying 
that we should feel free to harvest the benefits of Racket-the-technology while 
avoiding obligations to Racket-the-community. As a matter of logic and ethics, 
I can't see how they are divisible. 


3) Today, I'm a reasonably well-adjusted adult (or at least my dog thinks so). 
But a long time ago, I was a fat and dorky and smart kid. For years, I was 
physically and verbally bullied at school. It was relentless and terrifying. 
But as was true for a lot of kids like me during that era, computers were a 
refuge. They never judged me. They rewarded my curiosity. 

I mention this not to put my experience on a footing with anyone else's. But it 
reminds me that while our contributions to Racket may be public, what Racket 
MEANS to each of us is necessarily private. Right now, there are people in our 
community for whom Racket is a bright spot in difficult times. If you haven't 
been there yet — you will.

To my mind, discussing these matters openly is about preserving the paramount 
virtue of a community based on sharing knowledge: to accept everyone just as 
they are. When we're falling short in this regard, we shouldn't avoid these 
facts, lest we make a virtue of ignorance. Or if we can't do this, and people 
bypass Racket in preference to other communities, then we'll have no one to 
blame but ourselves.

With much gratitude to everyone who makes Racket possible.


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