DrRacket is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 integrated development environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

 for the Racket programming language which has a graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

. 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

Debugger

A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which...

 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

Modular programming

Modular programming is a software design technique that increases the extent to which software is composed of separate, interchangeable components called modules by breaking down program functions into modules, each of which accomplishes one function and contains everything necessary to accomplish...

 is supported with the module browser, a contour view, integrated testing

Software testing

Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software...

 and coverage measurements, and refactoring

Refactoring

Code refactoring is "disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior", undertaken in order to improve some of the nonfunctional attributes of the software....

 support. It provides integrated, context-sensitive access to an extensive hyper-linked help system named "Help Desk".

Portability

DrRacket is available for Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 (95 and up), Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

, Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

, and Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 with the X Window System

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

and programs behave similarly on all these platforms.

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.