[racket] Why did a LISP-like language never made it to THE language for Web2.0

Hello,

I have been roaming in IT-world, for the last 10 days.
My project was to make a new CV, since I have to find work again.
Not an ordinary CV, made in Word. No, I wanted it on a webpage!
A special one, with animations and dynamic content.
I didn't like the idea to write it in plain HTML, directly.
HTML is not the best language to make a layout for a document.
It took me some time to make an XML file and a DTD,
Then I had to learn a myriad of XML-techniques and JavaScrpit (quite
interesting).
But finally I would have to do a lot of programming, my DTD contained
nested elements.
So the program had to be recursive and behave different, depending on the
name of each tag.
Anyway, the final result would be HTML, so I still had this layout-problem.
But now much more complicated.

Then I left that road and took an other one.
I arrived in the land of Tex and learned the Language of the Texians:
LaTex.
Overkill, for such a small document.
They promised me complete control over the layout, while In could
concentrate on the text
That was what I wanted!
With the Asymptote <http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/> package even
animations in PDF were possible.
A small JavaScript to ask the height and width for from the screen, adjust
the scale from the text and display a pdf in HTML format. Job done!
Found a nice package on CTAN <http://www.ctan.org/>, but was not root on my
own PC. So I couldn't add it to the already installed packages. Had to
re-instal Ubuntu, but no CD-R, no memory-stick here, only a USB-HD that I
had to format and take care, so it can boot. Never succeeded.
My LaTex story became pretty much hardcore SM (Not really, but they also
like latex).

So here I find myself thinking loud about: how IT should evolute and then I
thought of my beloved Racket: the land of the wishing wells and the very
smart princess <http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Racket>.

It must be that the princess is not very interested in making part of
web2.0.
There are XML, HTML Libraries in Racket. The next "How to design programs"
will be a kind of
How to: functional, client-server based, Finite State Machine programming
book
(just took a glimp of it)

There are other princesses who wished for small computers, called
smartphones( iPhones and Androids), and for XML, XSLT,  XPATH, XQUERY,
XSL-FO, JSON, JQUERY, DTD, SVG, ...
and for JavaScript, Java, ASP, PHP, C, C++, C#, and and and

Since all the ML's use tags and all the information in it, finds it self in
binary trees, this whole web-thing could be well treated by a language that
is invented to handle Lists. A language that exist for more then 50 years.
So I Ask: Why isn't that the answer for Web2.0?

I like the idea of keeping data, layout and logic separated (MVC).
I like OO, client-server and state-machines.
Is there a possibility that a programmer could chose for one language
(Racket hint hint)
and will be able to do, all what is necessary for making modern web-based
applications, multi-platform and multi-screen-size?

The answer is: YES and it could indeed be Racket.
In theory: theory and practice are same.
In practice: practice and theory are different.

I don't know about the existence of webpages that are generated
'Racket-wise.'
I just checked racket-lang.org, did a 'view source' and noticed
in the metadata: name => generator content =>racket
So it does exist!?

The princess already realized my personal wish.
Only I'm not as smart as the princess.
She is even so intelligent, she made a method to embed pieces of code,
written in other languages.
If you can't wish it in Racket, then just embed some C-code or whatever.

I coud use Racket, to call some JavaScript, to do some XSLT, to do  ... ...
...
from Dr-Racket, that runs in Ubuntu 13.0,
that runs on my VMware workstation,
that runs on Ubuntu 10.0.
...

Yes, it all can be done!
Almost did it yesterday
(Until I became so tired, i almost forgot my root-password again :)

I wish the princesses stop wishing and start to unify all their old wishes
and make something small and beautiful. Back to basics and no: not BASIC!

Then I will KISS <http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS-principe>  them
recursively and live long and happy.

Greetings,

Frank<http://images14.knack.be/images/resized/119/471/124/164/4/500_0_KEEP_RATIO_SHRINK_CENTER_FFFFFF/image/1194711241644.jpg>





















-- 
Hazelarenlaan 34 bus 6
3500 Hasselt
+32484538321
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.racket-lang.org/users/archive/attachments/20140115/c94084ef/attachment.html>