[racket-dev] plea for short planet syntax in student languages?

What they import is orthogonal to the syntax for importing.

> How about this experiment: everyone teach in plain Racket for a while
> and see whether teaching language restrictions are really needed.

That would be a good experiment.  My own suspicion is that getting rid
of implicit begin will prove to be absolutely vital, and will cover
about 75% of all the problems.  There may be one or two more important
cases, followed by a very long tail.

But if we only think in terms of language restrictions, I don't think
we'll make much progress -- unless we're willing to also consider
(small) language changes (eg, replacing "define" with "defvar" and
"deffun" so we can better distinguish intent and thereby provide
better errors).

Shriram