racket

Racket is a multi-paradigm programming language and platform designed for language creation, scripting, and application development. A descendant of Scheme, it emphasizes a hygienic macro system, first-class support for multiple languages, and a large standard library. The platform includes an integrated development environment, tooling, documentation, and package management, all geared toward education, research, and production use.

Racket originated as PLT Scheme in the mid-1990s at Rice University as a teaching and research language. Led by Matthew Flatt and collaborators, it evolved into the broader platform under the name Racket in 2010. The core language is Scheme-like, with a macro system based on hygienic syntax, an explicit module system, and support for tail recursion and continuations. Typed Racket provides optional static typing, while teaching languages support beginners.

Key features include a hygienic macro system, first-class continuations, a module system, and support for multiple languages within the same runtime. The language-oriented programming philosophy encourages building new languages or DSLs as libraries. The standard library covers networking, GUI, data processing, and web services. Tools such as the DrRacket IDE (formerly DrScheme) and the raco command-line tool aid development and package management.

Racket is free and open-source, distributed under a BSD-style license. It is used in universities, research, and industry for education, language prototyping, and cross-domain applications.