[racket] Neophyte Alert

From: Eli Barzilay (eli at barzilay.org)
Date: Wed Aug 31 15:45:22 EDT 2011

A few minutes ago, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
> Josh Tilles wrote at 08/31/2011 01:03 PM:
> > -- 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 ...))*?
> 
> I think most people do "'()" when they want a literal null list.
> Don't use "(list)", since that's a procedure call.

Two quick notes: (list) would be optimized the same, I think; and at
least in the Racket sources I think that `null' is the more popular
choice.  (With `empty' winning in the more HtDP-oriented side.)


> > P.S. Has anyone given any thought to consolidating some of the
> > Racket discussion to a StackExchange site? Or something else of
> > that ilk?
> 
> Racket info is getting spread over too many places already, IMHO.
> Eli is the only person in the world who can find and follow them
> all.  I'd like to get more people on the Racket email list, and off
> their little islands where they're getting lower quality and not
> being brought into the fold.

Well, I view that as an unavoidable consequence of growing.  That's
why I prefer to (try to) keep track of these places rather than
discourage them.  (But I do discourage on-line forum things that aim
to replace the mailing list, since those won't work as well...)
Specifically for the SO case -- it has a bunch of advantages over a
mailing list, and it will be good (IMO) if more people get involved
there.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!


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