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Chicken VS Racket Lang

Compare Chicken VS Racket Lang and see what are their differences

Chicken logo Chicken

A portable and efficient cross-platform Scheme implementation that compiles to C.

Racket Lang logo Racket Lang

Racket (formerly PLT Scheme) is a modern programming language in the Lisp/Scheme family, suitable...
  • Chicken Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-18
  • Racket Lang Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30

We recommend LibHunt Racket for discovery and comparisons of trending Racket projects.

Chicken features and specs

  • Simplicity
    Chicken Scheme is designed to be simple and easy to understand, making it accessible for new users and those familiar with Scheme.
  • R5RS Compatibility
    Chicken Scheme implements the R5RS standard, which ensures compatibility with other Scheme implementations and a wide range of Scheme programs.
  • Portability
    It is highly portable and runs on various platforms, making it a flexible choice for cross-platform development.
  • Extensive Libraries
    Chicken has a rich repository of user-contributed extensions (eggs), providing a vast set of libraries that extend its functionality.
  • Performance
    Chicken Scheme is designed for high performance, using an optimizing compiler that translates Scheme code into C, which is then compiled to machine code.

Possible disadvantages of Chicken

  • Limited Community
    Compared to more popular languages, Chicken Scheme has a smaller developer community, which may limit resources and support.
  • Egg Management Complexity
    Managing extensions (eggs) can be complex and sometimes introduces dependency issues that can be challenging to resolve.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic usage is straightforward, leveraging advanced features and understanding the compiler's workings can have a steep learning curve.
  • Documentation Variability
    The quality and comprehensiveness of documentation can vary, which might complicate the learning and development process for new users.
  • Niche Use Case
    Being a Scheme implementation, its niche use case might not align well with industries primarily relying on mainstream programming languages.

Racket Lang features and specs

  • Metaprogramming
    Racket excels at metaprogramming, allowing developers to easily create domain-specific languages and macros to suit their specific needs. This makes it highly flexible and powerful for developing complex programs.
  • Rich Libraries
    Racket comes with a large standard library and an active package ecosystem, providing a vast array of tools and frameworks for different types of applications from web development to scientific computing.
  • Educational Use
    Racket is widely used in academic settings, particularly for teaching computer science and programming. It offers a pedagogic environment designed to help learners understand fundamental principles easily.
  • Interactive Development
    Racket's REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) allows for interactive development, making it easy to test and debug code snippets on the fly. This can speed up the development process and facilitate rapid prototyping.
  • Cross-Platform
    Racket is a cross-platform language and runs on various operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. This ensures that programs written in Racket can be easily shared and executed on different systems without modification.

Possible disadvantages of Racket Lang

  • Performance
    Racket is generally not as performant as lower-level languages like C or Rust. This can be a limitation for applications requiring high computational efficiency, such as real-time systems.
  • Smaller Community
    While Racket has a dedicated user base, its community is relatively small compared to languages like Python or JavaScript. This can make it more challenging to find resources, tutorials, or third-party libraries.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Racket's unique features and advanced concepts such as continuations and macros may present a steep learning curve for beginners who are not already familiar with Lisp-like languages or functional programming paradigms.
  • Limited Industry Adoption
    Racket is not as widely adopted in the industry as some other languages, which can limit job opportunities and its overall presence in commercial software development.
  • Verbose Syntax
    Racket's syntax can be verbose and complex due to its Lisp heritage, which uses extensive parentheses. This can make the code harder to read and maintain, especially for those not accustomed to it.

Chicken videos

KFC Nashville Hot Extra Crispy Chicken Review

More videos:

  • Review - KFC's® Nashville Hot Chicken REVIEW!

Racket Lang videos

🏸 Top & Best Selling Badminton Rackets 2020 (review of Year 2019) 🏆

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Chicken and Racket Lang)
Programming Language
19 19%
81% 81
OOP
22 22%
78% 78
IDE
35 35%
65% 65
Generic Programming Language

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Racket Lang seems to be a lot more popular than Chicken. While we know about 95 links to Racket Lang, we've tracked only 6 mentions of Chicken. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Chicken mentions (6)

  • Scheming About Clojure
    Clojure seems good enough. It is not flawless and somewhat overloaded, but far, far ahead of Javascript, Python, Go, or Rust. Of course, I would always prefer CHICKEN Scheme for any passion project. But in an environment that already runs databases written in Java, the JVM has street cred, and a large community hints at sustainability, Clojure presents itself as well balanced in novelty and stability. All in all,... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Veryl: A Modern Hardware Description Language
    Of course it does! What else would you call something like chicken scheme [https://call-cc.org/], ats [https://ats-lang.sourceforge.net/], or ghc [https://www.haskell.org/ghc/]? They are not "scripts", they are full-blown compilers that happen to use C as their compilation target, and then leverage C compilers to generate code for a variety of architecures. it's a very sensible way to do things. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • The Rise & Fall of LISP - Too Good For The Rest Of the World
    CHICKEN Scheme \ CHICKEN is a compiler for the Scheme programming language. It produces portable and efficient C and supports the R5RS and R7RS (work in progress) standards, and many extensions. It runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, many Unix flavours... Source: about 2 years ago
  • One Minute: Chicken Scheme
    Website: http://call-cc.org Manual: http://wiki.call-cc.org/manual/index Wiki: http://wiki.call-cc.org/ Repository: https://code.call-cc.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=chicken-core.git;a=summary Standard Libraries: http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/5/Included%20modules Extension Repository: http://eggs.call-cc.org/5/. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Ante: A low-level functional language
    If you’re fine with tracing GC (which depends on the situation, of course), Standard ML is a perfectly boring language (that IIUC predated and inspired Caml) and MLton[1] is a very nice optimizing compiler for it. The language is awkward at times (in particular, the separate sublanguage of modules can be downright unwieldy), and the library has some of the usual blind spots such as nonexistent Unicode support... - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
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Racket Lang mentions (95)

  • Cloudflare Topaz: formal verification to prevent conflicts in DNS configuration
    Racket! https://racket-lang.org/ “Whenever an engineer changes one of these programs, we run all the programs through our custom model checker (written in Racket + Rosette)”. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • The Little Typer (2018)
    Friedman's books are all great. All of them. But they don't work for everybody. If you can be relaxed and think of the interaction as play, they're very good. If you're feeling more of a "serious business" mindset, it can be hard to get in the groove of his style. There are a lot of jokes about food and encouragement to take breaks. If you can get into the learning as play mindset, I'd strongly encourage taking... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Ask HN: What programming language should I learn?
    - pipe operator It compiles to either erlang or JavaScript, so I was able to jump right into building something fun with a new language. >I previously gave Clojure a try, that was a pretty good fit, but the JVM / ecosystem put me off. I felt similarly w/ leiningen (too much boilerplate) but was lisp-curious still so gave racket (https://racket-lang.org/) a try and appreciated the batteries included philosophy of... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Ask HN: Which language is easiest to get started with functional programming?
    Biased recommendation: Try racket https://racket-lang.org/ It's not pure functional, but the preferred style is to use mostly functional constructs. (But you can cheat when it get's too difficult or you need some extra speed.) (And you can download packages like Qi that enable a new language inside Racket that has more support for functional style.) (Most Schemes have a similar mostly-functional style, so you can... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Racket–the Language-Oriented Programming Language–version 8.12 is now available
    Racket—the Language-Oriented Programming Language—version 8.12 is now available from https://racket-lang.org See https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-12-is-now-available/2709 for the release announcement and highlights. Thank you to the many people who contributed to this release! Feedback Welcome. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Chicken and Racket Lang, you can also consider the following products

Guile - Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, the official extension language for the GNU operating system.

Clojure - Clojure is a dynamic, general-purpose programming language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming.

Gambit - Cross-platform chess game.

Rust - A safe, concurrent, practical language

Hy - Hy is a wonderful dialect of Lisp that’s embedded in Python.

Python - Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.