Anecdotal...
Racket is a powerful general-purpose algorithmic language, including a
bunch of great facilities for mini-languages, plus some standard
libraries (like "racket/class") that support different ``paradigms''.
Early in my career, I did a lot of industry R&D work on methodology and
CASE for OO analysis/design/programming, as well as a lot of practical
work using those same methods and tools. So it was surprising to me to
find myself no longer using even an OOPL nor always decomposing the
world into a class-instance object model.
Nowadays, doing most of my development in Racket, I never use Racket's
OO library, but instead pick&choose conceptual constructions from
various different ``paradigms'', and implement them using basic Racket
features. For example, in the code I am working on in another window --
which generates a startup's Web site -- I think of the pages as objects,
but actually implement them using Racket "struct"s, and populated via a
minilanguage, with all the metadata and content embedded in the Racket
source file. The code is in a functional-esque style, with almost no
mutations, but I am also conscious of the algorithmic evaluation model.
The bodies of the pages -- separate from the metadata and stock parts --
is marked up in a minilanguage that is s-expressions that is SXML with
some non-SXML bits added to it: shorthands for things like referring to
particular pages by ID, and special URI objects (absolute URI that are
automatically translated to minimal URI relative to the URI of the page
in which they are referenced). The site has a
programmatically-generated navigation bar that works in a desired way
that off-the-shelf ones probably couldn't do. This is a small program,
and I just banged it out quickly to suit the task, not spent weeks on
it. It sure beats using some big ``enterprise framework'' that wants
things done in a bloated and bureaucratic manner yet doesn't really do
what I want.
Neil V.
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