Notepad

Racket 7.5 Released

Written by Dominik Joe Pantůček on 2019-11-21

racket

As we work on bringing Cryptoucan™ to the market, we use Racket for most of our back-end infrastructure programming. And as we are using it, it is nice we can contribute back. Read on to find about the additions to the latest Racket release!

You might recall we use Racket[1] for automating the testing of the devices produced in the factory[2][3][4] and for other computer science problems we face in our other projects[5]. It is a powerful language that excels on its own or it can be used to design - and use - domain-specific languages (DSL[6]) for particular tasks.

The language itself is a descendant of the Scheme language[7] with ancestry tracing back to original LISP[8]. Yes, lots of irritating, stupid parentheses. But nonetheless it is a very efficient tool for solving hard problems. And we like to solve hard problems.

We here at Trustica are also big fans of Open Source[9] and Free Software[10]. It drives the innovation in a way never perceived throughout the whole human history. And we want to play a part in forming this history.

Therefore, when there's time to polish the code we have produced, it is also time to publish it appropriately. I personally learned about sharing the code way back in the 1990's when it helped me learn new languages, new paradigms and how to solve seemingly hard issues with relative ease.

So with the release of Racket 7.5[11], the code I produced for maintaining programming documentation about modules written in Racket and leveraging the Racket's class system[12] is now merged into the Racket's documentation language Scribble[13] which is part of the default Racket distribution. So without any other setup, you can now use the scribble/srcdoc[14] to document your classes as well!

It is not only about sharing the code. Tuesday next week I am attending the ITSecCamp[15] in Augsburg where I expect an interesting discussion about how you can (or more likely cannot) trust your computing devices and what you can do about that. And on Thursday I am visiting ESME[16] in Paris to discuss the academic possibilities with prospective computer science[17] students. I am really looking forward to see the young talented people there and hopefully some of them will come to my university[18] next year and will earn their master's degree there.

 

So enjoy the coming winter (no pun intended) and come back next week, we should be back with some hot Cryptoucan™ news!

References

  1. Racket: solve problems, make languages, available online at https://racket-lang.org/

  2. https://trustica.cz/en/2019/02/28/simple-cv-in-racket/

  3. https://trustica.cz/en/2019/01/31/styling-ui-in-racket/

  4. https://trustica.cz/en/2019/07/25/embedding-application-data-in-racket-programs/

  5. https://trustica.cz/en/2019/10/10/parallel-merge-sort-leveraging-futures-in-racket/

  6. Wikipedia contributors. (2019, October 6). Domain-specific language. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:30, November 20, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Domain-specific_language&oldid=919888257

  7. Wikipedia contributors. (2019, October 27). Scheme (programming language). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:30, November 20, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scheme_(programming_language)&oldid=923225686

  8. Wikipedia contributors. (2019, October 26). Lisp (programming language). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:31, November 20, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lisp_(programming_language)&oldid=923148734

  9. Wikipedia contributors. (2019, October 24). Open source. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:31, November 20, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open_source&oldid=922785299

  10. Wikipedia contributors. (2019, November 17). Free software movement. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:32, November 20, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Free_software_movement&oldid=926587446

  11. Racket v7.5, available online at https://blog.racket-lang.org/2019/11/racket-v7-5.html

  12. Classes and Objects, available online at https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/classes.html

  13. Scribble: The Racket Documentation Tool, available online at https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/index.html

14.In-Source Documentation, available online at https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/srcdoc.html

  1. IT-SecCamp 26.11.2019, available online at https://events.schwaben.ihk.de/itseccamp2019

  2. ESME Sudria, available online at https://www.esme.fr/

  3. Wikipedia contributors. (2019, November 14). Computer science. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:37, November 20, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Computer_science&oldid=926058373

  4. Prague College, available online at https://www.praguecollege.cz/