from Hacker News

Racket Language – New website design

by Learn2win on 12/23/16, 3:27 AM with 40 comments

  • by cocktailpeanuts on 12/23/16, 5:11 AM

    I don't want to be that guy, but I think the design needs work. Especially since the title is saying "has a new design". I wonder what it used to look like. It looks like a nice piece of technology, but like the other guy said, the website is too busy and I don't know where to look at. It took me a minute to find the github link. It's almost like it's hidden purposely.

    Also the "Books" section is kind of misleading and made me think they're taking credit for something that they didn't do. After taking a look at the page for a while finally realized it's like scheme/lisp, and the books section kind of makes sense, but still it's still very confusing.

    This may be too harsh but the design almost reminds me of those parking websites that make money off of adsense. Hope they put some more effort into the design so the website can actually do the language more justice.

  • by lomnakkus on 12/23/16, 7:50 AM

    IMO, the "only show text + links on hover" thing needs to go. If you absolutely must do something like this, please use faded-but-visible text instead of completely hiding it.

    (It's also really annoying on mobile where you have to actively tap to show the links.)

    EDIT: Reasoning: Does this page contain the information I need? I can't tell without apparently hovering over everything. (Plus, if I hover away from one of the 'graphs' it's easy to forget what was on there.)

  • by Blackthorn on 12/23/16, 7:11 AM

    Feel like I'm the only one here who likes the site. I really like it. Just hope it works on mobile too where you can't hover.

  • by joesb on 12/23/16, 11:10 AM

    "Solve problems. Make languages."

    That basically sums up my problem learning Racket. "What is Racket the language? What language am I supposed to learn? What language am I supposed to use in production code? Will one language be compatible with another?

    I got lost reading Racket document. One section talk about a class syntax of a language. Another talk about some other stuff that never utilize a class. What am I supposed to do with this?

    I don't want to learn languages, I want to solve my problem.

  • by jstewartmobile on 12/23/16, 2:45 PM

    The docs are the only part I go to, and they look the same (not a bad thing, because they were always beautiful).

    Felleisen and and his group have been working on Racket for a long time, and it shows. I think PG's Arc even runs on top of it.

    Only gripe I can register is that they have gone full-speed-ahead on the DSL/metaprogramming aspect which kind of works against the language. See Tarver's "The Bipolar Lisp Programmer," or Alan Kay's quote: "Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material."

  • by no_protocol on 12/23/16, 4:44 AM

    That's great, but it doesn't really seem to tell me anything at all about what it is.

    From what I saw, it looks like a site that helps you make a variety of line drawings. Next time I need to make some line graphs, I'll check it out.

  • by aban on 12/23/16, 2:20 PM

    The re-design was done by Matthew Butterick [0].

    IMHO it looks nice and modern, and quite readable thanks to the great typography, but there are some fair issues raised here. So I opened an issue to let them know about it [1].

    [0]: https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-org/pull/28

    [1]: https://github.com/racket/racket-lang-org/issues/31

  • by agumonkey on 12/23/16, 12:14 PM

    I personally love it, it's light, just enough graphics, linear enough but not too long. Action button nicely placed.

  • by edem on 12/23/16, 10:42 AM

    Wow. This is the best looking lisp site so far. It is even responsive! Keep up the good work!

  • by um304 on 12/23/16, 9:26 AM

    Good design, but I think there should be bit more info about the project upfront at the top. It took me significant time to figure what Racket is.

  • by Nekorosu on 12/23/16, 1:02 PM

    The design is ok. The interactions need some tweaks. The cursor should change to finger pointer on mouseover on code snippet. Probably it's better to highlight code snippet on mouseover before expanding it on click.

    The other issue is all the links lead to pages with really old design. Hope this will get fixed too eventually.

  • by adelarsq on 12/23/16, 2:14 PM

    I feel really uncomfortable with this site. I got lost and just after some time I realized where each thing is placed.

  • by auggierose on 12/23/16, 3:05 PM

    the redesign seems to have impacted the PLT Redex site at:

    https://redex.racket-lang.org/

    I am trying to read the model part of the set of scopes paper and running it in PLT Redex, but it seems to be unavailable currently.

  • by largehotcoffee on 12/23/16, 6:19 AM

    I have no idea what's going on on this website.

  • by gigatexal on 12/23/16, 6:33 AM

    The website is fine I guess. What's more distracting is the lisp-like language. The parentheses are just too much. I guess I'm not one naturally inclined to functional languages.