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Arrangement/Content

  • "With a Vibrant Community" could be just "Vibrant Community".

  • "Strong" is kind of a strange word to describe safety and reasoning features. Why not "safe"? I don't like that either, but I think it's better.

    Use "Robust"

  • If I could change one thing, I would edit the first paragraph of the “Any Syntax” section. Instead of “Real Racket programmers love parentheses”,

Real

maybe something like “Racket programmers usually love parentheses”, and instead of “is almost as easy as building beautiful languages”, perhaps “is almost as easy as building parenthesized languages”.

??

  • ? For "Little Macros", can we have a different example? It takes me more than a minute to figure out what's going on in that example, even though I think I know macros and Racket syntax at some level. People who are new to Racket are going to just skip that example with confusion.
#lang racket

(require syntax/parse/define)

(define-simple-macro (where* ((~literal define) h b) clauses)
  (define h (let () (begin . clauses) b)))

(where* (define is-5-odd (odd? 5))
        [(define (odd? n) (if (= n 1) #t (even? (- n 1))))
         (define (even? n) (if (= n 0) #t (odd? (- n 1))))])

(if is-5-odd "five is odd" "five is not odd")

Mechanics

  • add tabs to browser HISTORY (pushState)

Code Examples

  • in initial web page, message-box

  • Gettybsburg's address with @As-scores[87]

Looks

  • screen size problems (MF yes someone should figure this out)

    fixed by Robby and Jesse

  • Can we make the headers ("Racket, the Language-Oriented Programming Language", "Racket, the Ecosystem") change color on hovering to indicate that it can be clicked?

  • Robby: "Sierpinski" plus 2htdp/image code

  • Robby: It would be easier on the eyes if the text color was slightly darker blue

Probably Useless

No

  • There should probably be a description of what language oriented programming is.

  • "little macros" and "big macros" should be adjacent.

  • "general purpose" and "DSLs" should be adjacent.

  • ? It would be cool if the typed Racket example contains a type error, and we show how typed Racket catches the error.

  • When trying to get the #lang examples to display again after clicking a tab under "the language-oriented programming language" section, my instinct was to click some of the whitespace off to the side to "deselect" the current tab. This did not work, and I had to instead click on the section heading.

  • The very first thing I see is news. If I'm a regular Racket user I would know where to get news from. If I'm a new user, I wouldn't care about news. Either way, I think it should have a place in homepage but not at the top.

  • ... trying to get all 3 ideas into view without scrolling (MF: remove news and get there?)

  • What's the difference between new frame%, message-box, and make-object button%. ("Why aren't they frame, message-box, and button?").

  • A Scribble example could be more free text, with only one or two @(. It would be nice if the Scribble example is mainly proses. Otherwise, users could (for example) assume that this is yet another Racket program will a nice string literal syntax.

  • Maybe leave out the comments in the code samples ... try to read the code and guess what it does

  • don't use JS for tabs (MF: I don't even know what this means)

  • The big blue headings look like another header, they are more prominent than the main top page header, which looks weird

  • The giant racket logo next to the code looks misplaced, the racket logo is already in the top left.

  • why isn't there a publications page?

  • show output of programs? -- For "General Purpose", again, users want to see an output. A GUI window (like the "Big Macros" example) would suffice.

  • The JavaScript driving a change of "tabs" doesn't use the history APIs (e.g. history.pushState, window.onpopstate), so it doesn't work as (I) expected with browser-based control operators like "back" and "duplicate tab." Mumble about our web server and continuations

  • Regarding the second row again, I think that we should not expect users to click on those tabs to explore. Instead it should be presented statically, maybe as grid of little boxes. Web pages are much more pleasant when I could just scroll through it.

Greg's Response

Many good ideas here! A couple suggestions:

  1. I recommend not assuming screen sizes.

Right-click, choose Inspect Element, and click the little mobile icon. Try various sizes, from a little mobile phone on up to an iPad. (This sort of tool is available in Firefox and Chrome.)

The current experience is not good. It should be: Someone might be on a train or plane, following a link from social media or the orange site. Sometimes commuting or traveling is their main opportunity to learn about new things and form first impressions.

  1. I recommend not using JavaScript to implement "tabs".

This isn't a "single page web app". It is text and images. It could simply flow through whatever size screen is available, small, medium, or large. Let the web browser do its job. (And let the page download faster, probably get higher search rank, etc.)

TL;DR: The current tabby thing is not helping on small screens; on large screens it is (in my opinion) a frustrating Advent calendar.

Future Work

  • The code snippets, e.g. under "little macros", are in too small of a font to read. Reminds me of talks where they just display tons of code to bamboozle the audience, which always annoys me.