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Light Table - a new IDE concept

chris-granger.com

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Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#51

Post by roguecoder »

stcredzero wrote: post #29

- Smallest unit of code is the function. - Able to get instant feedback on code changes. - Multiple editors with just one function in it. Show code in an "area of concern" not just in a file. - The coding environment can show also results, app windows, graphics, other tools. - Can save the configuration of the above. Smalltalkers have been doing this in commercial projects since the 80's. If only we could have commun…

We also had Virtual Machines with snapshots and rollbacks doing the things VMWare is now pushing so very hard.

I have missed those tools for the past 13 years, since I left the language. The idea that I might get those tools back, in a language that also supports all the emacs-or-gtfo coders, is like promising me a perpetual motion machine. I will believe it when I see it, and until then it will taunt me in my dreams.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#52

Post by gfodor »

stcredzero wrote: post #29

- Smallest unit of code is the function. - Able to get instant feedback on code changes. - Multiple editors with just one function in it. Show code in an "area of concern" not just in a file. - The coding environment can show also results, app windows, graphics, other tools. - Can save the configuration of the above. Smalltalkers have been doing this in commercial projects since the 80's. If only we could have commun…

Of course this comment was inevitable. If Smalltalkers really believe their environment is the right way to code, their attitude should not be one of "we did this first, meh" but instead be "here's what we did right, here's what we did wrong. heed the lessons of history and good luck, you are on a mission from God."

I think with the proper care and nurturing, we could be at the beginning of a renaissance where many of the great ideas of the 60s and 70s that have been isolated to a small group of people (who are aging rapidly) are being rediscovered and reimagined by this generation. This is happening in no small part due to Rich Hickey and the Clojure community's unbelievable foresight in developing Clojure and ClojureScript in just the right way that it balances these pure, beautiful ideas with pragmatism in a way that makes them irresistible.

Those who lived through the heyday of Xerox PARC, the AI lab, the lisp machines and Smalltalk should see this as an opportunity to help make sure things don't go off the rails this time. Otherwise, we may end up back here again in 25 years with the C++ and MySQL of the future installed in our cybernetic implants.

I can already point to projects that are invisibly pushing us towards another deep, sticky, next-generation tarpit, and people are diving in because it's not yet recognizable as such. (I won't name names!) Lets try to make it so this time around we truly realize the dreams of computation by encouraging people who are building elegant, beautiful things for the modern era, no matter how much the ideas therein have been tried before.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#53

Post by fstephany »

gecko wrote: post #32
stcredzero wrote: post #29

- Smallest unit of code is the function. - Able to get instant feedback on code changes. - Multiple editors with just one function in it. Show code in an "area of concern" not just in a file. - The coding environment can show also results, app windows, graphics, other tools. - Can save the configuration of the above. Smalltalkers have been doing this in commercial projects since the 80's. If only we could have commun…

Yes, but our code was entirely in these utterly unusable changeset files that couldn't work nicely with the version control that everyone else in the entire world was using; his version still uses files under the hood. There's a team that's trying to back Monticello with Git, I believe by saving each method into its own file in part of a Git source tree; that looks promising as a compromise.

https://github.com/CampSmalltalk/Cypress

Hopefully this project will take off :)

Smalltalk vendors will probably add a layer of Envy/Store/Monticello on top of it but that would be a giant step forward.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#54

Post by ibdknox »

jules wrote: post #40

This is great, however it glosses over the elephant in the room: what if a function is called multiple times, or what happens when code within a function is run multiple times? Which data do you display in the data flow view? What is really needed is an intuitive way to select a context or multiple contexts. SubText's approach to this is to let you dig deeper in the call tree by clicking on function calls, but for a…

There are several options here:

- show multiple iterations in place - show a single iteration with a forward and back - show multiple blocks for some reasonable n iterations - ...

I definitely don't think that's going to be an issue longer term and I think there are lots of potential avenues to play around with :)

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#55

Post by TwiztidK »

This looks great. I was talking about this with some friends who mainly use vim and they would be for using this if it incorporated vim key-bindings. Whenever they have to use other IDEs (usually Eclipse) they have a hard time not using vim commands.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#58

Post by 286c8cb04bda »

__mharrison__ wrote: post #27

This is awesome. I love the idea and the implementation looks great. ibdknox claims that it would work with any dynamic language. I'm not sure there is anything capable of finding dependent functions in Python without actually executing the code. Could someone illuminate me?

Take a look at these:

[1] http://docs.python.org/library/parser.html

[2] http://docs.python.org/library/ast.html

[3] http://docs.python.org/library/symtable.html

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#59

Post by minikomi »

ibdknox wrote: post #9
icey wrote: post #3

This is pretty exciting stuff. IIRC ibdknox used to work on Visual Studio when he was at Microsoft.

I did indeed. I used to be the Program Manager for C# and VB in the IDE. :) A number of the ideas presented here started brewing during my time there, but it took me a bit to figure out what the overall abstraction should be. I really love the drafting table parallel - it's especially interesting when you start thinking about what we can do with touch...

Even if it proves unweildy once a project grows too large, as a learning and prototyping tool this looks fantastic. Thank you!

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#60

Post by thehagbag »

microtonal wrote: post #35
ibdknox wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually my live game editor - not the same thing, but also fun! I haven't decided what to do about my prototype quite yet, got too excited about sharing the idea :)

This is so cool, that I think you'd get plenty of funding to further develop this via a Kickstarter project.

I'm far from a developer, but this got me excited. Actively watching code changes would make learning that much easier. I'd donate.
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