[racket-dev] racket vs. scheme vs. clojure (as it appears to others)

The Web is full of outdated and/or ill-informed references to PLT and 
Racket.  People see these, and the bad information propagates 
memetically -- perpetuating and increasing.

One thing Racket people could do is a one-time blitz of existing bad 
info all over the Web, to correct as many of these as possible, and 
promote the message of how Racket is positioned.  This can include 
updating various wikis, posting corrections or updates in otherwise 
stale Web forum threads, emailing maintainers of non-wiki sites 
suggested updates to their pages, emailing blog authors who do not have 
comments, etc.  This is a one-time thing, to update the static parts of 
the Web, distinct from the ongoing activities of participating in 
dialogs as they happen.

Before doing the blitz, an internal refresher course on the message 
wouldn't hurt, so that the blitzing by multiple people is fairly 
consistent.  Example of something to decide: Under what circumstances 
should Scheme ever be mentioned, and how should Racket's relationship to 
Scheme be characterized when it is mentioned?

I can tell you that the word "Scheme" is often useful when a prospective 
Racketeer starts out wanting "Scheme", and then they get pointed to 
Racket.  And I think "Scheme" might *sometimes* be useful when someone 
academically-inclined is asking about interesting programming languages 
and we can tout Scheme as part of our heritage (or, alternatively, just 
point to the PL research).  "Scheme" is usually a liability when someone 
used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP).  "Scheme" is also a 
liability when someone is almost in the Racket fold, but then goes 
Googling around for information on "Scheme" and gets all confused, 
time-wasted, and turned off.

-- 
http://www.neilvandyke.org/