At Tue, 16 Jul 2019 21:55:03 -0400, Greg Hendershott wrote: > [...] > I think it would be a mistake to skip this discussion.
Agreed, so I'll offer my take on these specific questions, at least if you'll humor my read of "more popular" as "lower barrier". At Tue, 16 Jul 2019 21:55:03 -0400, Greg Hendershott wrote: > 1. More popular, among who? I think we should be aiming for programmers generally. Some of those programmers will still be in school, but I haven't noticed a huge difference in the way students approach things and the way practicing programmers do. > 2. How popular? Are we aiming for as popular as Clojure? Haskell? > Python? Java? JavaScript? I'll skip this one, because I don't see how to read it as "lower barriers". > 3. What are various possible ways to achieve this popularity, including > -- but not limited to -- changing the surface syntax? Other ways I see to lower barriers are more documentation, running on more platforms/VMs (as also suggested in this thread), and improved tools. > 4. Which are most likely to succeed? Which are most likely to backfire? > [...] > 4. Do we have some sense of how to rank them on effort and risk? Changing the surface syntax seems on the high-effort --- high-risk -- high-reward end of the scale. Documentation is more on the medium-effort --- low-risk -- low-reward end. We need more, but we (and you specifically) have put significant effort here, and there's bound to be a diminishing reward to saying the same thing a little better and in different ways unless we also somehow find new voices. Running on more VMs is high-effort -- medium-risk -- medium-reward. We know how to do this, but it takes a long time. Building Racket on Scheme, which should be about the easiest possible choice, took a couple of years (and counting); then again, we were aiming for a very high level of compatibility, which might not always be necessary. There are ongoing projects here and they should certainly continue, because they hit a good point in the risk--reward spectrum. Maybe I am personally burnt out on this direction, so I am motivated to reason in favor of a different problem. Improved tooling also seems high-effort -- medium-risk -- medium-reward. I'll defer to those who concentrate more on tools, including the author of Racket mode for Emacs, to suggest a priority for this one. > 5. Given all that, what should we do? You have a more than my 2 cents already. :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/5d336cba.1c69fb81.f7666.34b8SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING%40gmr-mx.google.com.
