Functional Geekery Episode 133 - James Stelly

In this episode I talk with James Stelly. We talk his explorations of programming languages and how that led to his book Racket Programming the Fun Way.

Our Guest, James Stelly.

Announcements

No Starch Press has offered listeners a 30% discount on Racket Programming the Fun Way until the end of the year with discount code GEEKERY30.

Some of you have asked how you can support Functional Geekery, in that vein, Functional Geekery now has a Patreon Page.

If that is one of the ways you would like to show your support, you can find out more at https://www.patreon.com/fngeekery.

Topics [@1:10]

Welcome James
About James
Fortran
C++
MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage)
FOCUS
NOMAD
Access
Sql Server
Forth
Python
J
C#
JavaScript
Scheme
Racket
LaTeX
James’ first exposure to a functional programming language
F#
Pipeline operator (|>)
Still having access to the rest of .NET ecosystem
Haskell
James’ takeaways from playing with Haskell
Typed Racket
What drew James to Racket
Broad tool changes
Interactivity of Racket
Racket Programming the Fun Way
Writing the book as a way to learn Racket
Racket being a “Swiss Army Knife”
Prolog and Logic Programming
Possibility of expanding Automata Theory using macros
Relationship to Racket
Building a CNC machine
G-Code
Grbl
Arduino
How has playing with different language feed back into “day work”
Visual Basic
What was exciting about using Racket for the problems in the book
Logic Programming
Search Algorithms
Why Racket
“Most mileage out of and can do a lot of different things”
Dr. Racket environment
Hover over variable and see arrows showing usage
What is the target audience of the book
Matthew Flatt as the technical reviewer
“Given everything in the book, that is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with Racket”

As always, a giant Thank You goes to David Belcher for the logo design.