[racket] [BULK] Fundamentals

I like these arguments, but those who ask the unanswerable questions about compiling, interpreting, and scripting wouldn't get the details.  From your answer and JRMs, I might try to stick to: "Racket is JIT-compiled too", and it even runs lightweight languages like R5RS Scheme. The point is to relieve fear and maintain access to charge numbers provided by those who are justifiably skeptical of any claim of improved ways of developing software.

rac


On Oct 14, 2010, at 3:04 PM, namekuseijin wrote:

> the ultimate answer is 42.  Now you just need the proper question...
> 
> here's another take:  java is JIT-compiled too.  It powers a very
> large industry.  The difference to Racket is just a few million
> dollars worth of hype, man-power and a (largely) static verbose
> type-system:  this provides a tad better oportunities for the compiler
> to pin down optimizations.
> 
> so, you wonder if you should take Racket as a lowly interpreted
> scripting language or as a noble compiled programming language?
> 
> I have no way to answer you, but here are a few facts for you to
> ponder and make your decision:
> 
> Amazon.com was originally written in Perl (later at least mostly
> rewritten as C++)
> Twitter.com was originally written in Ruby (later rewritten as Scala
> running on JVM)
> Reddit.com was originally written in Common Lisp (later rewritten in Python)
> Slashdor.org was originally written in Perl.
> Facebook.com is written in PHP.
> 
> these are some heavy-traffic websites.  If a bytecode-interpreted
> "scripting" language can do some "real programming", then certainly a
> JIT-compiled language can more than handle a  smaller website or a
> single-user desktop app.