Ecosyste.ms sponsors
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An open API service aggregating public data about GitHub Sponsors.
Racket, JS, Lean, math.
Funding Links: https://github.com/sponsors/jessealama
After being immersed in the Lisp world for a long time (mainly Common Lisp, then a bit of Clojure), I pivoted to Racket in about 2014 and haven't looked back. Despite its experimental nature, I find it to be the closest approximation I know of to what I want to do as a programmer.
After having initially dabbled privately, gradually leveling up behind the scenes working primarly on web-related projects, I wrote Server: Racket to help Racket programmers get started with the various built-in libraries in Racket as well as third-party packages that, together, can be used to make your first Racket-powered web app or CRUD-style web API.
The intended audience for Server: Racket is primarily those who already have some experience with Racket. The book isn't really an introduction to the language. After receiving feedback, though, it became increasingly clear to me that there were quite a lot of Racket lurkers (for lack of a better word) who were looking for an introduction. Hence I made Racket Weekend, a deliberately brief and incomplete tour of a number of choice points in the Racket landscape that, in my view, are useful to know about for newcomers.
Later, I decided to dive into the wonderful world of #lang and Racket's approach to what is known as language-oriented programming. The result was a series of interviews with a few dozen Racket programmers, trying to understand their take on language-oriented programming. The result of this was Language-oriented Programming in Racket: A Cultural Anthropology. The title is a bit bulky, but all it's trying to get at is that I myself do not offer any particular take on Racket-style language-oriented programming. Rather, I offer a curated set of glimpses into how others understand the term. It is a delightful (and large!) undertaking. It is an on-going project that continues to evolve. The initial version was released in 2018, and the latest update was for 2020. A new edition is in progress.
During all this time I've been developing a number of Racket packages and #langs. I'm most proud of Riposte, a #lang for black-box testing of JSON-based HTTP APIs.
I'm a born-and-raised American living in Mainz, Germany. My background is in the academic/R&D worlds, but I pivoted to the commercial world of programmer, having worked at Vicampo as a full-stack programmer and now at Igalia, an open-source consultancy.
How your sponsorship helps
Your sponsorship is valuable for all sorts of reasons:
It is a form of feedback about my work. If you use my stuff and don't file any bug reports or feature requests, I assume everything is hunky-dory. Maybe that's even true! A sponsorship is a way to tell me to keep up the good work.
Some of my Racket projects are fussier than others. A sponsorship buys me time to devote greater attention to the more complex libraries (such as the aforementioned Riposte and Laramie, a validating HTML5 parser in Racket) that are inherently more time-intensive.
A sponsorship gives you voice in what you'd like me to work on. If you look at my profile and see something that I could be working on but shouldn't, a sponsorship can serve as a kick in the butt for me to add value to your Racket life.