Is there any part of a language so obviously unimportant as its name? PLT Scheme was recently renamed to Racket, but it's just a name change; the language is the same as before (or at least isn't changing faster than usual). I was rather surprised to hear of this (I fleetingly thought it was April) since the old name is so well known, but apparently the PLTers think their language will be better off if it's not associated with other Schemes. Anyway, the change shouldn't affect anyone who knows, right?
But it does affect me. Yesterday I was lamenting how little of Scheme is portable across implementations, and found myself thinking, “wait, that doesn't apply to PLT Scheme any more, because it's Racket now”. Even though I know there's no difference, I tend to see PLT Scheme as a Scheme with nonportable extensions, and Racket as an independent language. The new name is working: it makes me take Racket more seriously as a platform, not just an implementation.
(However, I keep mistaking it for “Rocket”.)
That's a *very* nice demonstration of why the name change was needed!
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