Steve Graham wrote on 02/05/2015 02:24 PM:
Out of curiosity, what kind of application have you developed for your client? Did you have to justify your use of Racket? Why did you choose Racket?
That particular system was originally developed by others, I've been consulting to help them evolve it, and... NDA.
There are a various anecdotes and perspectives you'll hear from people who developed systems using atypical languages/platforms. For example, there are public comments by someone at ITA (since acquired by Google), who developed a large system in CL, and who said something like they thought doing it without some of the CL features was impossible. (Racket happens to share those features, and overall I much prefer Racket to CL.) I think the best reason to choose an atypical language/platform is because it gives you a strategic advantage. (For Racket, a likely strategic advantage is its metalanguage strength.)
There is also a funny side benefit in that, if you choose an atypical language that some of the sharpest and most knowledgeable people gravitate towards disproportionately, this seems to result in you being able to hire a caliber talent that you probably couldn't otherwise. For example, it's public knowledge that ITA hired a dream team of noteworthy Lisp and CS people, for a project that I suspect didn't otherwise sound attractive to most people. I suspect the attraction for many was the chance to do big things with Lisp, or to work with other noteworthy people. If this is sounding similar to some of the attraction of, say, Google, I think it is -- only, unlike the "Google" household word, it just usually doesn't impress your family and friends (unless they are CS people).
If you're trying to get some kind of approval for your platform choices, such as from established-company executives or startup investors... that can be hard. You really have to bring the goods, so that the unfamiliar seems a worthwhile risk. And, if you're successful thus far, you might have to renew that faith periodically, whenever it's time for another dose of architecture investment.
In a different situation, if you're doing moonlighting projects, like apps and Web sites, without investors&executives&managers... you can have reasons that would be harder sells than obvious strategic advantage, like "I feel more productive with it", "it's more fun", "parentheses are aesthetically pleasing (though pound-colon is not)", and "I can search/ask a question about the platform, and get a high signal:noise ratio."
Neil V. ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
