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Light Table - a new IDE concept

chris-granger.com

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Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#101

Post by kijin »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #88
kijin wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might not want the hassle of dealing with files and folders all the time, but I sometimes worry that a new generation of "programmers" will emerge who have no understanding of how the underlying filesystem works.

Why is that a bad thing (aside from the "I had to walk uphill both ways through the snow" aspect)? A significant portion of this generation doesn't understand CPUs and buses. They wouldn't have been able to write anything remotely complex 20 years ago). That doesn't seem to be hindering things much, though. There are still system programmers out there who dive into it, but our abstractions have gotten good enough tha…

CPUs and buses have been abstracted away pretty successfully by now, especially if you use a high-level language. But I can't imagine that the same will happen to file systems, at least not in the next 10 years. Too many of our critical tools, like all version control systems, depend on knowing where in the file system hierarchy your stuff is stored. Even if your IDE hides that from you, you'll need to know where to look as soon as something goes wrong. And things go wrong at the file system level a lot more often than they do at the CPU level.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#102

Post by jamesaguilar »

marbletiles wrote: post #64

Am I the only one who wants to see multiple, proportional fonts in editors? Sure, I want to keep the methods themselves in monospaced font, but can't I have the method declaration in a larger size, and comments in a proportional serif? There is a wealth of design experience out there in communicating things better and more quickly with typography, so why do we not take advantage of that in our IDEs?

You can already do this with barely any effort at all in emacs. M-x customize-faces and then set the method face to be larger or a different family.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#104

Post by abc_lisper »

Kudos on a job well done. I have been thinking about these things, and in case you haven't seen lisping(iPad app), check that out too.

One question though: Where do you store all your functions? Do you use a db or something like that? Or just one flat file or file/func?

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#105

Post by ibdknox »

Void_ wrote: post #103

How long did it take you to build this prototype? I'm interested because when I played with Clojure I didn't feel like you can make quick prototypes with it.

5-6 days, most of which had to do with me having to hack around in the compiler a little. That was new for me and the Java there is particularly weird, so that took longer than I would've liked.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#106

Post by hollerith »

pragmatic wrote: post #73

Isn't it ironic that this is posted on a site that does startup funding and the comments are "please put this on kickstarter" not "please apply for Y Combinator"? Is it possible that Kickstarter will disrupt Y combinator style startup funding? If we (the consumers) can bypass the investors and pay for what we want, why do we need the startup gatekeepers? Obviously this wouldn't work for all startups but a large porti…

Probably the people who mentioned kickstarter tend to think kickstarter for ideas without large profit potential, and unless you also sell a software-deployment platform (like Microsoft and Apple do) tools for programmers does not IMHO have large profit potential.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#108

Post by thecosas »

kijin wrote: post #68
benwerd wrote: post #8

I can't get my hands on this soon enough. It makes so much sense: we're moving away from the files and folders metaphor everywhere, so why not in the IDE too?

We might not want the hassle of dealing with files and folders all the time, but I sometimes worry that a new generation of "programmers" will emerge who have no understanding of how the underlying filesystem works.

I think there are (at least) two different viewpoints of what is required for people to be able to program (and do it well).

First, an explosion in the power of the hardware being programmed on has made people think less of the efficiency that coding once required and more about getting something done. This feels sloppy, but can be a good starting point for iteration (+1 buzzword).

Similarly, the number of tools out there to get someone (like me) started on programming has EXPLODED in recent years. This results in a lot more people at least starting to code in whatever limited way.

I think it's naïve to think that people who start to code "the simple way" will always code that way. If they're actually pursuing as a career, they will always be digging more and trying to find out why something works a particular way.

Not seeing the filesystem/structure at first glance also isn't necessarily the same as NEVER looking at it or being interested in how the pieces all fit together. it simply means you don't have to worry about it RIGHT NOW.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#109

Post by Dove »

jaxn wrote: post #98
Dove wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a few reasons, though they may not be the ones he has in mind. There's the fact that you're dealing with cell references rather than variable names, so all of your expressions look like ($K4 - $S$1) rather than (principal - payment). There's the fact that the IDE you're working in is trash -- rather than a text file with carefully indented parenthetical statements, it's a single line text field. Sort o…

Those reasons are spot on. Also errors are difficult to track down and spreadsheets have horrible code re-use.

Oh yeah. I knew there was one I forgot.

You get compiler errors about as helpful as trying to debug C++ macros -- namely, something is wrong with this big glob of code, but it ain't gonna tell you what or where.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#110

Post by zokier »

marbletiles wrote: post #64

Am I the only one who wants to see multiple, proportional fonts in editors? Sure, I want to keep the methods themselves in monospaced font, but can't I have the method declaration in a larger size, and comments in a proportional serif? There is a wealth of design experience out there in communicating things better and more quickly with typography, so why do we not take advantage of that in our IDEs?

Suns Fortress language was kinda interesting experiment in that direction: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/first-impressions-o...
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