# Interesting discussion on hacker news (21-April-2024) **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [April 24, 2024, 6:06pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/interesting-discussion-on-hacker-news-21-april-2024/2884 "2024-04-24T18:06:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 4
**Author:** ![sschwarzer](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/sschwarzer/32/1940_2.png) [@sschwarzer](https://racket.discourse.group/u/sschwarzer)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2024, 5:24pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/interesting-discussion-on-hacker-news-21-april-2024/2884/4 "2024-04-27T17:24:16Z")
> [@spdegabrielle](#): > > PL research dominates the Racket ecosystem I can at least understand where the impression might come from. To me it seems that compared to many programming language ecosystems, Racket has much more "language tooling" in relation to other features/libraries. _For example_, sometimes I wonder if it's worth it to have so many `for` forms instead of providing a base for the most common uses and leave the rest to the language users in case they need more. (This could be by combining simpler `for` forms with other code or use named let.) I think part of the reason for all the language tooling is that macros and #langs make it relatively easy to write such tooling. So people attracted by this possibility turn to Racket and write more and more such code, which again attracts more people interested in that and so on. 🙂 > [@spdegabrielle](#): > > In the last Racket survey, over 50% of users identified as professional developers. I can imagine that some of the professional developers do much more "PL research"-ish things than in other language ecosystems even if they're not _being paid_ for PL research and hence might not be seen as PL researchers. 😉 This topic actually reminds me of some of the discussion in [this thread](https://racket.discourse.group/t/responses-to-common-criticisms-of-lisp-languages/1986). --- _[View the full topic](https://racket.discourse.group/t/interesting-discussion-on-hacker-news-21-april-2024/2884)._