[racket] Neophyte Alert

On Aug 31, 2011, at 10:03 AM, Josh Tilles wrote:

> Dear Racketeers,
> I'm (comparatively) young, and so also not familiar with the social protocols of IRC & newsgroups in the world of software development. My basic question is whether there is a place that explains the etiquette of interacting with the Racket & PLT communities. Or perhaps just a few sentences detailing how to use the ListServ effectively? Because you all do seem to be wonderfully active and helpful, but I'm just not sure how to jump in. 

Sounds like you just did!

> 
> But before you direct me to How to Design Programs: I don't think I'm that much of a n00blet. A representative sample of the sorts of questions I've wanted to ask more experienced people include:
> -- In learning about continuations & how they can be used in web servers, I'm really reminded of Haskell's use of monads to accumulate state. How similar are monads and continuations? Am I falling into some conceptual trap by linking them?

You can use a monad to model continuations (the continuation monad), just as you can use a monad to model state (the state monad). I don't think that I would naturally use monads to understand continuations any more than I would use monads to understand state... but that's up to you, I suppose.

> -- Is there any sort of general practice or prevailing taste in when to use (for example) null vs empty vs (list)?

:)

> What about (let ([...])) vs (local (define ...))? 

In the last few years, there's been significant motion towards allowing (define ...) in more places; at this point, I would say idiomatic Racket uses (define...) without the local.

> -- When is it appropriate to use RackUnit, and when should Contracts be used instead?

:)

> 
> P.S. Has anyone given any thought to consolidating some of the Racket discussion to a StackExchange site? Or something else of that ilk?

Without knowing more: what advantage would that have?

John Clements


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