Dear Racketeers,
I'm (comparatively) young, and so also not familiar with the social protocols
of IRC & newsgroups in the world of software development. My basic question is
whether there is a place that explains the etiquette of interacting with the
Racket & PLT communities. Or perhaps just a few sentences detailing how to use
the ListServ effectively? Because you all do seem to be wonderfully active and
helpful, but I'm just not sure how to jump in.
But before you direct me to How to Design Programs: I don't think I'm that much
of a n00blet. A representative sample of the sorts of questions I've wanted to
ask more experienced people include:
-- In learning about continuations & how they can be used in web servers, I'm
really reminded of Haskell's use of monads to accumulate state. How similar are
monads and continuations? Am I falling into some conceptual trap by linking
them?
-- Is there any sort of general practice or prevailing taste in when to use
(for example) null vs empty vs (list)? What about (let ([...])) vs (local
(define ...))?
-- When is it appropriate to use RackUnit, and when should Contracts be used
instead?
(it's not necessary to answer these questions now, unless you're eager to;
asking them on their own later will probably help keep discussions clear)
A tiny bit of my context, in the chance that it's helpful: 20-year-old
undergrad rewriting a research lab's web app in Racket because I inherited
thousands of lines of messy pseudo-OO PHP.
A preemptive thank you for helping!
--Josh Tilles
P.S. Has anyone given any thought to consolidating some of the Racket
discussion to a StackExchange site? Or something else of that ilk?
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