Hmm... perhaps. Last I tried Racket using it as I'm using Python didn't work well. It wasn't just the startup time of Racket, it was also all the libraries I used. Like loading most libraries is almost instant in Python but they weren't in Racket. Sure I could perhaps solve those issues (caching?), but it would be working against the grain of the language's ethos and that just doesn't work out well in my experience. For example, there are excellent REPLs for, say, Rust, but using them is not the same as using a REPL for a language (runtime) intended for interactive use.
I run a Racket program [1] that uses `racket/gui`, `plot`, `db`, etc. and I don't have long startup times when running the main program in a terminal. Maybe you have an example?
Arch Linux with Racket v8.11.1. Starting a REPL takes almost a second and a simple hello world 300 ms. (No use telling me I should do x, y, z. A language that doesn't get it right by default is not for me.)
