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  • any time the topic of racket comes up, i wonder if there are any interesting apps i could explore. but all i find is libraries and dev tools: https://awesome-racket.com/
    by em-bee
  • it's an academic language
    by mono442
  • You can ask Claude to write you some.
    by eru
  • https://joeldueck.com/what-about/camp/
    by velcrovan
  • For my own tools, some of them still in production at home and at work: https://github.com/DexterLagan?tab=repositories&language=rac...
    by dexterlagan
  • Some games to play:

    https://spritely.institute/arcade/

    The underlying tech might be more fun:

    https://spritely.institute/hoot/

    Hoot is a Spritely project for running Scheme programs on the web, featuring a Scheme to Wasm compiler and a general-purpose Wasm toolchain.

    https://spritely.institute/goblins/

    https://files.spritely.institute/papers/spritely-core.html

    At the heart of Spritely is Goblins, its distributed object programming environment. Goblins provides an intuitive security model, automatic local transactions for locally synchronous operations, and an easy to use and efficient asynchronous programming interface for encapsulated objects which can live anywhere on the network. Its networking model abstracts away these details so the programmer can focus on object programming rather than protocol architecture.

    Goblins also integrates powerful distributed debugging tools, and a process persistence and upgrade model which respects its security fundamentals.

    by so-cal-schemer
  • One of the more notable apps originally written in Racket is https://news.ycombinator.com.

    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language)#His...

    by Zambyte
  • There is this https://remember.defn.io/

    You can read the about it here: https://defn.io/2020/01/04/remember-internals/

    by LasEspuelas
  • While the language is interesting, sadly, nobody is using it in the wild. Maybe due to cumbersome deployment options? The ability to produce native standalone executables would boost its usage I believe.
    by zerr
  • Naughty Dog uses Racket for all their scripting...
    by hyperbolablabla
  • https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/exe.html
    by TheGoddessInari
  • Given that a lot of people use it in the wild I’m not sure where you’re getting that from.
    by dented42
  • I wrote my own AI coding harness in Racket, it works fine, meets my own needs. I did earlier versions in Common Lisp and Python but the Racket version is the most full featured.
    by mark_l_watson
  • Not only do I produce standalone executables in Racket, I cross-compile GUI apps written on MacOS to produce executables for Windows.
    by velcrovan
  • Here is a project using Scheme via GUIX to manage reproducible scientific workflows in high-performance computing (HPC). There are installations using it in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Australia, The United States.

    https://hpc.guix.info/about/

    https://hpc.guix.info/blog/2026/02/guix-hpc-activity-report-...

    Guix-HPC started as a joint software development project involving three research institutes: Inria, the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), and the Utrecht Bioinformatics Center (UBC). Guix for HPC and reproducible research has since received contributions from many individuals and organizations, including CNRS, Université Paris Cité, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), Cornell University, and AMD. HPC remains a conservative domain but over the years, we have reached out to many organizations and people who share our goal of improving upon the status quo when it comes to software deployment.

    by so-cal-schemer
  • Racket has been able to produce standalone executables for a while now.
    by throwaway27448
  • It is not due to deployment options. People put all sorts of stuff in docker containers every day. It is rather that few people make an effort to learn a lisp, and fewer still who choose to learn Racket. The few universities teaching good computer programming basics using Racket don't really make a dent. You simply don't have coworkers who know this stuff. Are you going to be the one person making a decision at the company, to use something no one but you knows? Not gonna happen.

    I have not had a single coworker, who has even started to learn these things, even after I have presented a Scheme on a Friday afternoon, and showed off some cool threading/pipeline syntax-rules macro, and showed how this compared to Python, showing how it reduces boilerplate in a way impossible to do in Python.

    Granted, this is in Germany, where CS education is not really all that great, and most universities teach boring Java or C++ or something.

    At least we had a RacketCon in Berlin some time ago, and I was fortunate enough to have a prof at university, who at least introduced Dr.Scheme. His motto was: "I am not here to teach you C, Java, or Python. I am here to teach you computer programming." (translated) He went on to introduce languages of various paradigms, from Prolog, to Dr.Scheme (predecessor of Racket), to C, and Python. Thank you Prof. von Löwis.

    by zelphirkalt
  • > Emacs Lisp — millions of people run Lisp every day without knowing it, because their editor is a Lisp interpreter.

    Are there seriously any emacs users who are completely unaware of elisp? Isn't elisp the entire point of picking emacs?

    by wild_egg
  • Most Emacs users I personally know simply treat it as an editor. They're not really aware how it works under the hood.
    by BeetleB
  • Interesting article overall, although some gotchas on the introduction.

    Misses out on LispWorks and Allegro Common Lisp for the Common Lisp entry, which contrary to SBCL provide a similar graphics experience as the Lisp machines of yore, here missing out on TI and Xerox as well, Genera wasn't alone.

    by pjmlp
  • Btw - if people are interested in Racket related blogs / articles etc.

    https://racket-stories.com/

    by soegaard
  • btw: Lean 4 is getting all the buzz these days, but how many people know that Scheme/Racket is an extraction target language for the Rocq Prover (aka Coq).

    https://rocq-prover.org/

    The Rocq Prover implements a high-level program specification and mathematical language called Gallina that is based on an expressive formal language called the Polymorphic, Cumulative Calculus of Inductive Constructions that itself combines both a higher-order logic and a richly-typed functional programming language. Through a vernacular language of commands, the Rocq Prover allows:

        to define data structures, functions or predicates, that can be evaluated efficiently;
    to state mathematical theorems and software specifications;
    to interactively develop formal proofs of these theorems;
    to machine-check these proofs by a relatively small certification "kernel";
    to extract certified programs to languages like OCaml, Haskell or Scheme.
    As a proof development system, the Rocq Prover provides interactive proof methods, decision and semi-decision algorithms, and a tactic language for letting the user define its own proof methods. Connection with external computer algebra systems or theorem provers is available.

    As a platform for the formalization of mathematics or the development of programs, the Rocq Prover provides support for high-level notations, implicit contents and other mechanisms for formalization at scale.

    by so-cal-schemer
  • On a more personal note, for some weird reason, Racket ended up being the language that got me one of my most important contracts. Through a whole series of butterfly-effect events, that eventually led me into CAD software development, which is where I discovered my love for metamaterials. It’s funny how these things happen!
    by Geometridae
  • because autocad is scripted in lisp ?
    by slim
  • Much as I am a fan of Racket, this is not a friendly intro. It is a speedrun.

    When an introduction says “friendly”, I don’t expect it to assume that I know what lambda is.

    When an introduction says “friendly”, I don’t expect syntax rules to appear in it. At all.

    by fn-mote
  • not to mention a skull? is it a racket thing (or lisp in general thing) to spoof the grateful dead logo?
    by y1n0
  • Agreed. As someone who hasn’t used Racket it wasn’t clear to me why syntax rules needed to be used over a simple define or what syntax rules even did that define didn’t.
    by vgbm
  • When I see "friendly introduction," I don't expect to see a deadhead sticker front and center. But I guess if you're an actual Deadhead it's not that startling. ;-)
    by phlakaton
  • It is rich with information, to the point, and presented in a way that a motivated and competent reader can immediately know something about and be useful with racket. That’s how it was for me anyways; someone who didn’t know anything about racket before reading through this.

    Wtf kind of intro to a programming language doesn’t include syntax rules? We are all informed, experienced, technologically inclined people here. Not dumb children.

    I’m struggling to see your comment as anything more than contrarian babble.

    by allthetime
  • My first language, 1980 in CMU, was Pascal... quickly followed by LISP in CS/AI courses and C for EE courses. I was a big fan of MacLisp at the time, the MIT version that GLS worked on (could see his comments all over the sources). Of course GLS moved on to Scheme and wrote a few definitive papers on closures. Yeah, that was before PC's everywhere... a loooong time ago. (C++ came years and years afterwards, not a fan. I would have stayed with hardware if the ++ version of C was forced on me all those years ago.)

    GLS moved to CMU in the early 80's... I remember taking "Comparative Programming Languages" from him. Good teacher and impressive guy. In addition to the obvious, he also covered SNOBOL and APL in that course. Memories :-)

    by SA9G