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1 point by akkartik 4864 days ago | link | parent

Yes, as I was ranting I was feeling bad for not having contributed to improve things. I wasn't being rhetorical about feeling stupid and guilty. Lack of understanding is a barrier but no excuse. For me to say "I have a phd, but this I can't read" is akin to saying "I've learned spanish, but chinese is hard." Well, d'uh. Deal.

Perhaps PLT needs a user guide in addition to a reference, a level of redundancy with a kinda orthogonal organization (focusing on complex tasks involving multiple advanced concepts) that'll help people triangulate on understanding, or just use what works for them.



3 points by elibarzilay 4863 days ago | link

Heh, excellent idea: http://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/

(See also other such documents at http://docs.racket-lang.org/getting-started/)

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1 point by akkartik 4863 days ago | link

I've seen that before. Why have I not paid more attention?

Here's the extremely clear guide on extensible equality: http://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/define-struct.html#%28part...

I'm going to withdraw my rant. It's something specific about my stupidity that's causing me these problems. Still investigating.

Ah, I think I see what's been happening. Since I started out with arc I've restricted myself to the mzscheme 'ghetto' and not paid as much attention to the racket language itself. My attitude was "who knows what works in mzscheme and what doesn't." This has been the root cause of my troubles, I think.

I'm going to focus on core racket now.

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2 points by evanrmurphy 4863 days ago | link

Thanks for the link to Guide: Racket. I've also had trouble getting into Racket's documentation, but this looks like a much more accessible starting point than Reference: Racket.

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