Having spent a bunch of time writing Python over the last year (while building Pycket [1]), the debugger is the one thing I wish I had in Racket. This isn't because it interacts with C (I've not used any C extensions), but because it makes debugging much faster than when I have to use printf (my usual strategy in Racket). I'm really excited about Medic (https://github.com/lixiangqi/medic), which seems like a very cool approach for adding more debugging to Racket.
[1] https://github.com/samth/pycket Sam On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 2:41 PM, Matthias Felleisen <matth...@ccs.neu.edu> wrote: > > I think we don't miss a conventional debugger in Racket (Emacs or Dr) > because, unlike say Python, Racket is not a shallow layer over some > unsafe amalgam of C and C++. Sure there is some of it left but our > crashes don't leave core dumps because most of them are safe. > > I agree that on occasion it would be neat to say "stop here and > let me explore/modify the environment and the store." Most of the > time though you get away with printf because the language is safe > I just don't consider it high priority until someone shows me a > really good use case. > > -- Matthias > > > > > > On Feb 28, 2015, at 9:33 AM, Greg Hendershott wrote: > >>> Don't make me want to go back to programming Racket in Emacs :-) >>> But thanks for mapping Emacs back into the fold. -- Matthias >> >> The more I do with racket-mode, the deeper my appreciation for >> everything that DrRacket does. It's really quite amazing. >> >> Also the more I program in Emacs Lisp, the more I appreciate programming >> in Racket. :) >> >> >> p.s. The edebug feature in Emacs Lisp is one thing I do now miss in >> Racket. IOW I'm tempted to tackle using DrRacket debugger annotations, >> with an edebug UI in Emacs. Either per-function like edebug, or per >> module(s) like DrR. >> >> Sure, I hardly ever want a debugger for Racket, in the way I used one >> heavily and religiously for C/C++ (to step through new code the first >> time instead of just hitting Run). After all we have the REPL, and >> functions. And TBH printfs usually suffice. So I hardly every used the >> debugger in DrRacket. >> >> And yet. Sometimes it would be handy to set breakpoints and step through >> code. Now that I've done that enough with Elisp for racket-mode, I want >> to be able to do it for Racket code, too. >> >> Aside from utility, there's just the raw challenge of making something >> like that work. At least it would be a challenge, for me. > > ____________________ > Racket Users list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
