TITLE: No, the RICO Act Does Not Apply
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: June 08, 2010  4:46 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
The mafioso over at PLT have done it.  They have renamed
their suite of languages, editors, tools, and teaching
materials from the collective "PLT Scheme" to
<A HREF="http://racket-lang.org/">
   Racket</A>.
As they
<A HREF="http://racket-lang.org/new-name.html">
   explain on their web site</A>,
the Scheme part of the old name had grown increasingly
less useful for identifying their work and the languages
they had created.  As a result, they had to continually
distinguish their work from the work of the mainstream
Scheme community, which was similarly disadvantaged by
having the PLT community's work consume much of the
mindshare around the name Scheme.  A name change solves
both problems... with the new cost of having to re-brand
PLT Scheme, Dr. Scheme, Mr. Ed, <TT>mzscheme</TT>, and
the rest of their suite.

This is the first time I have ever seen a programming
language community try to rebrand its language, so this
will be fun.  I suspect the PLT folks will be just fine.
They are both great researchers and tool builders, and
they are remarkably energetic in disseminating their
ideas.  I don't think there is any danger they will
lose many of their current devotees, if any.  The real
question is whether the new name will make it easier or
harder to bring new users on board.  Because "Racket is
a Scheme" <B>and</B> Racket is not <I>called</I> Scheme,
I figure the name change is at worst a wash and at best
a perceptive move.  Over the next couple of years, we'll
see which is true.

If nothing else, this is likely to force me out of my
holding pattern with PLT Scheme 4.2.0 and into the
modern era of PLT, er, Racket 5.0.  The
<B><TT>#lang</TT></B> construct is such a nice solution
to several different issues in creating languages and
building large systems.  Now I'll have to try it out
for real!  I'll also have to convert all of the code
for my programming languages course, which will give me
a little more incentive to make some larger changes in
what I teach in the course and how I teach it.  That's
good news, too -- an extra shot of energy.
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