So glad to see him articulate what I've always felt about x-exprs.
It often gets overlooked because we all understandably want to hype something in a language that's really cool, original, abstract or otherwise reflects well on us. But being able to intuitively, iteratively and rapidly work on XML & HTML files is lush, and the IDE with built-in REPL is just gravy for this purpose.
Even if working on XML and HTML files is boring and a technically solved problem in most languages, it feels better in Racket to me, and the essay did explain why it feels better.
It often gets overlooked because we all understandably want to hype something in a language that's really cool, original, abstract or otherwise reflects well on us. But being able to intuitively, iteratively and rapidly work on XML & HTML files is lush, and the IDE with built-in REPL is just gravy for this purpose.
Even if working on XML and HTML files is boring and a technically solved problem in most languages, it feels better in Racket to me, and the essay did explain why it feels better.