Subject: [bug#48308] [PATCH] gnu: racket: Update to 8.1.

From: Philip McGrath <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 17:06:43 -0400

On 5/9/21 4:34 PM, Jack Hill wrote:
> Not related to the update, but I noticed `guix lint` complain about the 
> racket synopsis (it begins with an article). I think we could just drop 
> the 'a' and leave the rest of it as is and it would still make sense and 
> satisfy the linter.

Ah, yes, I had noticed that. It's not a big deal and I'm happy to defer 
to community consensus. I had kept the "a" because it's a reference to 
Felleisen et. al.'s "A Programmable Programming Language" 
(Communications of the ACM, March 2018) [1], the title of which in turn 
is a quote Foderaro's "LISP: Introduction" (Communications of the ACM, 
September 1991) [2]:

 > When Lisp adopts a new paradigm, it not only replicates
 > existing practice, but goes beyond it to become a testbed
 > for advancing the state of the art. Why has Lisp been able
 > to adapt so easily when other languages have not? One
 > reason is that Lisp is a *programmable* programming language.
 > Not only can you program *in* Lisp (that makes it a programming
 > language) but you can program the language itself.

[1]: 
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/3/225475-a-programmable-programming-language/fulltext
[2]: https://doi.org/10.1145/114669.114670

-Philip