DrRacket

DrRacket

Developer(s)	PLT Inc.
Stable release	5.2 [1] / November 9, 2011; 1 day ago (2011-11-09)
Development status	Active
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	Multilingual (13 languages)
Type	Integrated development environment
License	GNU LGPL
Website	http://racket-lang.org
Standard(s)	R5RS, R6RS

DrRacket (formerly DrScheme) is an open source integrated development environment for the Racket programming language which has a graphical user interface. It is widely used among introductory Computer Science courses that teach Scheme and is lauded for its simplicity and appeal to beginner programmers. The IDE was originally built for use with the TeachScheme! project (now ProgramByDesign), an outreach effort by Northeastern University and a number of affiliated universities for attracting high school students to computer science courses at the college level.

DrRacket is built on top of Racket and its cross-platform GUI library, two other components of the Racket project.

Features

The editor provides source highlighting for syntax and run-time errors, parenthesis matching, a debugger and an algebraic stepper. Its student-friendly features include support for multiple "language levels" (Beginning Student, Intermediate Student and so on). It also has integrated library support, and sophisticated analysis tools for advanced programmers. In addition, module-oriented programming is supported with the module browser, a contour view, integrated testing and coverage measurements, and refactoring support. It provides integrated, context-sensitive access to an extensive hyper-linked help system named "Help Desk".

Portability

DrRacket is available for Windows (95 and up), Mac OS X, Unix, and Linux with the X Window System and programs behave similarly on all these platforms.

References

1. ^ Racket blog, Racket v5.2

• Felleisen et al. DrScheme: An Overview. Sigplan Notices, 1998.
• Findler et al. DrScheme: A Programming Environment for Scheme. Journal of Functional Programming. 2001.

External links

• DrRacket is available to download for free, along with its source code, extra software tools, extra libraries and related books.
• How to Design Programs - An Introduction to Computing and Programming using DrRacket.