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Comment by jp0d | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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).

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.

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.

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