Luke Vilnis wrote at 05/10/2012 12:58 PM:
[...] along with (imo) sexier looking code samples to show to prospective Racketeers is worth it.[...]
Separate from whether "def" is a good idea, I think we might be better off forgetting about sexy examples for a while. We tend to get our 'sexy' code examples wrong anyway, and I suspect that we will continue to get them wrong even if some of the identifiers are made shorter.
I think Racket evolution should have a guiding principle of doing things that its developers find useful or otherwise think are good practice, and *not* get derailed changing the language to try to appeal to real/imagined other people who can't see that or won't take the initiative and try it.
(Tangential anecdote: Before I started learning Scheme, one of the reasons I liked Lisps was that I could get all terse with lots of tricks. Scheme taught me that terse-ness is not as important as I thought it was, and indeed I was doing it more than optimal. This is something I came to appreciate because I made an effort to try what seemed to be the idiomatic ways of doing things. Of course, I'm still biased by prior experiences, just like everyone else, but I did make the effort. Given that, these mythical prospective Racketeers, on some Python/Java/Arc/somecrud site, pontificating on how Racket would be so much more practical if only there were such-and-such changes, without actually knowing Racket-- they can eat my shorts.)
I'm not criticizing Luke's suggestion. This is just an opportunity to point out what I consider an ongoing/recurring problem. I think I am at least as guilty of this as anyone.
Neil V. ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
