[racket] Getting started with R6RS

From: Eli Barzilay (eli at barzilay.org)
Date: Sat May 14 22:32:25 EDT 2011

Two hours ago, Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote:
> 
> Much the same as, when I used to write lots of shell programs, I
> didn't really think about writing a #! on the first line, until
> there was some reason to know how the file was being interpreted, at
> which point I was glad I could just read it off the first line.
> 
> #lang is just #! done right.  Maybe it should be presented that way.
> (And then the Windows weenies will ask, "What's #!?"...)

That's a *really* good analogy.  It determines the language in a
similar way, and it's magical in a similar way.  (That is, trying to
understand how it works involves obscure kernel level hacks for how
these files are considered executables, how they're being executed,
etc.)

Making this analogy would probably be very useful for Elliott's case,
but even if you ignore the windows crowd I think that too few people
know about it enough to make it effective.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!


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