[racket] Racket 6.0 does not work

On 03/05/2014 09:03 PM, Junia Magellan wrote:
> I would like you to understand that most people are not PhD in
> Computer Science. 90% of people want to run out of the box
> applications. Even programmers don't have in depth knowledge about the
> workings of computers and operating systems. I don't know why Racket
> 6.0 needs libc.so.6, or GLIBC_2.14. I just want to run statistics
> programs written in Racket from an Internet page.
Hi Junia,

I'm not a racket dev, indeed, I've not even downloaded Racket 6.0.  I am 
a heavy user of racket.  In fact, I several people in my company 
(NBCUniversal) use racket nearly every day.  These aren't PhD's in 
computer science - these are finance managers, marketers, and sales 
people who never use anything other than excel, outlook, and ie...and 
well, now, racket.  Albeit version 5.3.6.

The racket devs work very hard (for free, too), and they put out an 
excellent product.  DrRacket is a superb ide, and the racket language 
(and its language-building libraries) are superb tools for multiple 
environments.  They, in fact, do work out of the box for those who 
aren't expecting to be able to compile from source.

Racket 6.0 has some pretty big changes, and the errors you're reporting 
are a bit a fluke.  To be fair, I don't know anyone who has had a 
pain-free conversion from python 2 to python 3, either.

It's great of you to report the errors and your build environment, and 
to help the community iron out the issues with the 6.0 branch.  But the 
condescending lecture doesn't help.  The Racket devs "get it".

I felt a need to defend them, and [more importantly] also to encourage 
you to keep using racket (we use v5.3.6, which you noted compiles fine 
out of the box.  and the binaries work great, too).

Regards,

Matthew Eric

-- 
Matthew Eric Bassett | http://mebassett.info