Top all-time · #1669
Matthias Felleisen
Personal blog · felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughtsprogrammingculture
Matthias Felleisen writes The Felleisens Live Here, a personal blog at felleisen.org about programming and culture. Since 2018, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 55 times, most often “Developing Developers (2015)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 5 of 31 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Matthias Felleisen's essays and Thoughts page on teaching programming, the Racket and HtDP design philosophy, and his Northeastern CS curriculum. Some threads also discuss his personal controversies.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called the Thoughts page 'a lot of great content', the Racket manifesto 'a really good resource', and an essay on intro CS flaws 'highly recommend'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 31 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Developing Developers (2015)6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-03-31
- Racket as a First Language3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-01-12
- The Racket Manifesto3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-05-19
- Matthias Felleisen: Free Speech (2018)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-02-07
- Thoughts2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-19
- History of Programming Languages: Lectures2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-01
- How to Design Classes (draft) (2011) [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-04-08
- The design recipe from "how to design programs"2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-26
- On HtDP2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-06-03
- Apology2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-17
What Hacker News says?
As I understand it, Scheme was intended to be a dialect suitable for teaching programming. The usual first texts are The Little Schemer , How to Design Programs ( https://htdp.org/ but apparently a third edition is forthcoming: https://felleisen.org/matthias/HtDP3e/index.html ) and the inestimable SICP: http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918465 ) "A bad day writi…
Comment linking /matthias/HtDP3e/index.html
on “Show HN: Bel”Submitted Apology as a story · 256 points
HN discussionI see that Matthias has responded and issued an apology on his website: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Apology.html
Comment linking /matthias/Thoughts/Apology.html
on “Why I no longer contribute to Racket”Submitted Developing Developers (2015) as a story · 201 points
HN discussionThe link to the personal site was a byproduct of what he described as a "social experiment" in which he published the James Damore memo on his office door, and was offended that students reported him to the dean for acting to create a hostile work environment, rather than engage with him directly about the scientific merits of Damore's memo. He describes this himself here: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Fre…
Comment linking /matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html
on “Why I no longer contribute to Racket”Submitted History of Programming Languages as a story · 155 points
HN discussionMatthias is an awesome professor. His blog/Thoughts page has a lot of great content. https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/index.html
Comment linking /matthias/Thoughts/index.html
on “How to Design Programs (2014)”Submitted On HtDP as a story · 121 points
HN discussionSpeaking as a combined BS/MS grad who TA'd the first semester intro course for 6 semesters and had the pleasure of having one of the authors advise me on a senior project type thing, a big +1 to this. I sometimes feel like I'm crazy when I tell people I wouldn't pick nearly anywhere else for undergrad CS, but time after time when I compare with peers on their experience, this model really is incredibly different and…
Comment linking /matthias/Thoughts/Developing_Developers.html
on “How to Design Programs (2014)”Submitted Racket as a First Language as a story · 20 points
HN discussionOkay, I just checked my Northeastern application submission: GPA: 5.46/5 weighted SAT Reading and Writing: 790 SAT Math: 790 SAT Essay: 19 SAT Math II: 800 SAT Chemistry: 800 P.S: As for California, you're not going to like this: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Articles/loyalty.pdf In order to advance in academia in the UCs, you have to sign a loyalty oath supporting affirmative action!
Comment linking /matthias/Articles/loyalty.pdf
on “Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]”Submitted Principles of Programming Languages – Lectures – Matthias Felleisen as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI have found that the best way of learning the HtDP approach to program design, at least for me (I find the book itself a bit dry), are the EdX "How to Code" free moocs [1] [2]. The instructor is fantastic. It completely changed the way I program and design. If you like the approach and want to learn more, like, for instance, how to extend it to OO design, I list below links to several courses (most, except for the…
Comment linking /matthias/Thoughts/Developing_Developers.html
on “If not SICP, then what? Maybe HTDP?”Submitted Developing Developers as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWhile being a general purpose programming language, Racket is intended for Language Oriented Programming[1]. I was looking at Lisp Game Jam 2018's submissions when i stumbled on this game https://euhmeuh.itch.io/lisp-vs-blub-empire . The author made a throwaway language by wrapping Web Assembly intermediate language into racket using less than 250 lines of code[2]. This is what Racket is really about; an environment…
Comment linking /matthias/manifesto/
on “Why Racket? Why Lisp?”Submitted The Racket Manifesto as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI recently rebuilt my personal website on a Racket project: https://gitlab.com/JoelMcCracken/joelmccracken.com/ My post about why I chose it: https://joelmccracken.com/entries/pollen-writing-semantic-ma... A really good resource for understanding the motivation behind racket: https://felleisen.org/matthias/manifesto/ For a taste of the build code I wrote: https://gitlab.com/JoelMcCracken/joelmccracken.com/blob/mast.…
Comment linking /matthias/manifesto/
on “Racket Is an Acceptable Python”Submitted Developing Developers (2015) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionOh, you think there should be an actual counterargument to the proposition that Scheme is "not a Lisp"? Well, okay. This is of course a purely semantic discussion, about the meaning of the word "Lisp" (and "Scheme", if you like). Words are defined by their community of users, and you are of course free to use them however you like, at the risk of talking nonsense and tricking yourself into logical fallacies if you a…
Comment linking /matthias/manifesto/sec_pl-pl.html
on “A bestiary of single-file implementations of programming languages”Submitted Racket as a First Language as a story · 3 points
HN discussionApparently you’re not the only subordinate he’s loaded off in academia. https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html
Comment linking /matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html
on “Apology”Submitted The design recipe from "how to design programs" as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBeautiful Racket[0] is a good starting point that covers a lot of nice small examples that incrementally build up your understanding of the different components involved in making languages. And it uses Racket[1], which incorporates the idea of crafting many small "domain-specific" languages to solve different problems into its entire philosophy[2]. [0] https://beautifulracket.com/ [1] https://racket-lang.org/ [2] h…
Comment linking /matthias/manifesto/
on “Ask HN: What's a starting point for learning how to write programming languages?”Submitted Thoughts as a story · 2 points
HN discussionShriram did an excellent job being a lively, energetic and engaging speaker who distilled some of the core concepts of the paper down without getting tangled in the formalisms. I do not have an academic background in theoretical computer science and was nevertheless able to follow along his talk perfectly well. For anyone interested in reading it, the paper by Matthias Felleisen that this talk is based on can be fou…
Comment linking /matthias/papers.html
on “On the expressive power of programming languages (2019)”Submitted How to Design Classes (draft) (2011) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt's the philosophy behind How to Design Programs ( https://htdp.org/ ) and Matthias' other educational works. On HtDP might be relevant to your interests ( https://felleisen.org/matthias/OnHtDP/index.html )
Comment linking /matthias/OnHtDP/index.html
on “Developing Developers (2015)”Submitted History of Programming Languages: Lectures as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHere is Felleisen's (who I should note is retiring) views on teaching programming at NEU, which is worth a read: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Developing_Developer...
Comment linking /matthias/Thoughts/Developing_Developers.html
on “Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum”Submitted Teaching PL as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
