Abstract
The creation of a programming language calls for guiding principles that point the developers to goals. This article spells out the three basic principles behind the 20-year development of Racket. First, programming is about stating and solving problems, and this activity normally takes place in a context with its own language of discourse; good programmers ought to formulate this language as a programming language. Hence, Racket is a programming language for creating new programming languages. Second, by following this language-oriented approach to programming, systems become multi-lingual collections of interconnected components. Each language and component must be able to protect its specific invariants. In support, Racket offers protection mechanisms to implement a full language spectrum, from C-level bit manipulation to soundly typed extensions. Third, because Racket considers programming as problem solving in the correct language, Racket also turns extra-linguistic mechanisms into linguistic constructs, especially mechanisms for managing resources and projects. The paper explains these principles and how Racket lives up to them, presents the evaluation framework behind the design process, and concludes with a sketch of Racket's imperfections and opportunities for future improvements.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | 1st Summit on Advances in Programming Languages, SNAPL 2015 |
| Editors | Thomas Ball, Rastislav Bodik, Benjamin S. Lerner, Greg Morrisett, Shriram Krishnamurthi |
| Publisher | Schloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing |
| Pages | 113-128 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9783939897804 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 1 2015 |
| Event | 1st Summit on Advances in Programming Languages, SNAPL 2015 - Asilomar, United States Duration: May 3 2015 → May 6 2015 |
Publication series
| Name | Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs |
|---|---|
| Volume | 32 |
| ISSN (Print) | 1868-8969 |
Other
| Other | 1st Summit on Advances in Programming Languages, SNAPL 2015 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | Asilomar |
| Period | 5/3/15 → 5/6/15 |
Funding
Over 20 years, this work was partially supported by our host institutions: Rice University, University of Utah, Brown University, University of Chicago, Northeastern University, Northwestern University, Brigham Young University, and Indiana University as well as several funding agencies and foundations: AFOSR, CORD, Darpa, the Department of Education?s FIPSE program, the ExxonMobile Foundation, Microsoft, the Mozilla Foundation, NSF, the Texas Advanced Technology Program. We wish to thank Claire Alvis, Ryan Culpepper, John Clements, Stephen Chang, Richard Cobbe, Greg Cooper, Christos Dimoulas, Bruce Duba, Carl Eastlund, Burke Fetscher, Cormac Flanagan, Kathi Fisler, Tony Garnock-Jones, Paul Graunke, Dan Grossman, Kathy Gray, Casey Klein, Jacob Matthews, Scott Owens, Greg Pettyjohn, Jon Rafkind, Vincent St-Amour, Paul Steckler, Stevie Strickland, James Swaine, Asumu Takikawa, Kevin Tew, Neil Toronto and Adam Wick for helping us hone the guidelines. In addition to the reviewers, Ben Greenman, Vincent St-Amour, Asumu Takikawa made several suggestions on improving the presentation.
Keywords
- Design guidelines
- Full-spectrum language
- Language generation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software