[dbpatterson]

So... unless Grinnell does things very differently, the author did not learn Racket, they learned (Beginning/Intermediate/Advanced) Student Language, and that's the point.

Racket is a complicated language, designed primarily in order to support the easy creation of other languages: it would be as bad a choice (perhaps worse) for a first language as any other. All of the simplicity, focusing on learning to program, programming structurally based on data, that comes out of HtDP, is enabled by the restricted language.

It's too bad that this naming confusion persists, as I think it hurts the effort to focus on teaching _programming_ in intro classes, vs. teaching X language (I don't want to teach people Racket any more than I want to teach them Python or Java. They can learn those on their own -- they'll probably learn at least a half dozen other languages over their career, all on their own, if they stick with it). This curriculum is about figuring out how to most effectively teach people to program: the language was created, after the fact, to support that.

[ng12]

Fair point although I feel like Racket deserves credit for the way it builds upon itself. By design it allows you to have the Student Languages that are each iterations upon the previous, and all are valid Racket programs.

As a counter-example you can't do much of anything in Java without introducing class and public-static-void-main-string-args.

[dbpatterson]

I think this still, somewhat, misses the point.

Sure, Racket has facilities to make implementing languages easier (that's the whole point), but that simply makes it _easier_ to implement BSL, etc. I could certainly, with more effort, implement BSL in Java or in any other language: the language that students are using really has nothing to do with the _host_ language. Things are somewhat confused by DrRacket (or, made simpler, depending on your perspective); the IDE is somewhat mixed up with everything else, but again, this functionality can and does exist in other editors: I could implement a mode for my BSL implemented in Java in, say, VS Code, with comparable features to DrRacket.

Or, to take a completely different tack, implement the IDE via the web a la WeScheme or, if you want an actual concrete example of something that isn't Racket hosted, Pyret.

[ng12]

What would be the point of implementing BSL in Java? You'd still have to teach the basics of object oriented programming and all the details of Java's implementation... unless you abstract all that away to the point were you aren't teaching Java anymore. BSL being easy to implement isn't as important as BSL being a useful subset of Racket that's easy for students to understand.