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Comment by jp0d | Hacker News Reader

Is SICP the best way to learn Racket?

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/...

Absolutely not.

SICP is a fun way for a mathematically-strong person to learn a huge swath of computer science through experimentation and thinking about the results.

You have to not just _do_ the exercises but _understand the results_. It's not an easy on ramp.

You would be better off working through the Racket Guide [1] or one of the tutorials on their web site.

[1] https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/index.html

Thank you kind stranger. I actually chose to learn a bit of StandardML to understand functional programming, but every now and then when I see a post like this I get tempted to try Racket as well. I've got a copy of SICP on my desk and I've barely read 30 pages. Someday, I will.

Try out the Programming Languages Coursera by Dan Grossman. It starts with SML and then moves on to Racket.

I did a few lessons on Standard ML from it on Coursera. It's brilliant. Thank you.

Why would you want to learn racket after having learned sml? racket is great, no question about that, but it is mostly an educational tool and a "first language". I personally would rather choose a language with a broader real world user base. if you're interested mainly in functional programming, haskell would be a reasonable choice after sml. if not, there are plenty of other possibly more rewarding choices (on the long term).

Actually, you're correct. The only reason I can think of is curiosity. Beyond that it has very little importance, to me personally. That's why I may never do it. But it definitely looks fun. I don't know about Haskell but I'm more interested in F#. Some of my colleagues have worked on Haskell in the academia.

F# is a good choice IMO. There is a great book by Scott Wlaschin named Domain Driven Design made functional. Two birds one stone.

It's far more flexible than SML. I'd pick Racket over SML for production use any day of the week. (And I have indeed shipped code in both SML and Racket.)

Racket is a great language to learn, it's fun. Knowing a language of the ML family already doesn't diminish one's enjoyment of a Lisp.

You can still learn those other languages, too. Learning enough about Racket to have some fun doesn't take that long.

Racket's student languages are "mostly an educational tool" and designed to be a "first language". Racket, the whole language, is a large, batteries-included, industrial-strength system. It is not less or more powerful than SML, it's different, including offering various strengths that SML does not.

I counter this. I had a couple of years of experience and a Masters degree in CS when I first picked up SICP. Then I understood computation . I wish I could go back in years and learn from SICP first. I would could save myself from a lot of dead end perspectives and frustration. SICP is a peerless jewel imo

But the question was not "what is the best way to learn computation", it was for the best way to learn Racket.

Yep. My bad.

I liked SICP when I read it as a teenager, but these days it's far from the best book even for a 'mathematically-strong person to learn a huge swath of computer science through experimentation and thinking about the results.'

The book hasn't aged all that well. But maybe that's just me. See https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/wadler87.... for a more reasoned opinion.

I don't know that arguing for beginner students to learn what is basically the early version of Haskell as their intro to computing is a compelling alternative.

The basics of computing are hard enough to learn when you aren't focused on type theory, lazy vs eager evaluation, etc at the same time.

> I don't know that arguing for beginner students to learn what is basically the early version of Haskell as their intro to computing is a compelling alternative.

See when that text was published. The author would probably argue for a slightly more modern language these days.

I think HTDP is a great way to learn Racket and quite helpful patterns for thinking about programming in general. Also much more entry level than SICP.

https://htdp.org/

SICP uses Scheme. Racket is a rather different, much larger language.

Racket's default #lang isn't even compatible with SICP -- for example its cons cells aren't mutable. (Though it's perfectly fine to use Racket tooling with SICP or other Scheme books -- just set #lang scheme instead of #lang racket).

Dr. Racket does have an SICP #lang available; I'm not sure whether I got it through the package manager, or elsewhere.

https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/Installation.html - Installation instructions.

Looks like a third-party package?

https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/index.html

Thank you. I did not know that. I thought Racket was a superset of Scheme with a lot of batteries included.

You can very easily use Racket for SICP with minimal translations, even without the `#lang sicp` package. Racket's default cons cells aren't mutable, but Racket still has them. The `#lang sicp` package mainly provides the drawing needs that SICP uses as well as defaults for the MIT Scheme used in the book.

https://blog.racket-lang.org/2007/11/getting-rid-of-set-car-...

https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/mpairs.html

Cheers mate.

That is how it started, as Dr. Scheme, then it decided to go its own way and they decided a new name to make this visible.

Racket still has mutable cons though. Just prefix everything with an `m`.

https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/mpairs.html

I had been combining in rnrs/mutable-pairs-6 when I needed mutable cons, I didn't realize they were available in the base language. Dangit.

Beautiful Racket is quite nice: https://beautifulracket.com/

I would say if you only want to learn the language the official docs are great.

If you want to learn programming with Racket as the language How to Design Programs is great: https://htdp.org/

Or if you want an online course How to Code 1 & 2 are exceptional: https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:UBCx+HtC1x+2T2017/...

> Or if you want an online course How to Code 1 & 2 are exceptional

I second this. Greg Kiczales is an awesome teacher (and award winning computer scientist).

It is a great book. I'm planning to use it to teach an 11 year old how to program.

We've had one lesson. So far the format of me skimming SICP and giving him little challenges til he gets the content is working out.

As an adult sure it's great. Just do it. It's more scheme than racket though, but that's plenty.

Racket macros are important too and you won't get that from SICP.

One does not (ever?) finish learning racket. Even its creators are still researching it.

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