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Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k

kickstarter.com

51–60 of 67 posts

Re: Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k

#51
post #9

If anybody else is interested, here is a Web Numbr graph of the funding for Light Table over time: http://webnumbr.com/light-table-pledged (Sadly, I didn't think of setting this up until it was really far along).

Man, what happened to Web Numbr? I remember thinking it was super cool when I first saw it but it doesn't look like it's changed at all.

Re: Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k

#52

I'm complete ignorant at programming languages. But I've seen this video a few times, and it still seem like each feature are things I already do every single day of my life as an Android developer. Live documentation, organizing your work around functions, watching values and expressions change on debug etc. These are all things I already do every day. So suppose lighttable adds support for Android development. How…

I see here a possible cyclic thing happening with development environments. I've watched a lot of friends abandon IDEs in favor of more lean setup like textmate, or going the direction of emacs.

Lighttable strikes me as a possible move back towards a full IDE environment. A lot of the things shown here are already available on Eclipse but it's presented here with a much cleaner visual design.

The one thing Eclipse doesn't do is the "live" debugging with value substituting. I do think that would be very, very helpful. I could see that being implemented as an Eclipse plugin as well and it would be extremely useful in certain cases.

Re: Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k

#53
post #2

I've been a little quiet lately as I've been working on the next demo before the end of the Kickstarter. Based on the reactions I've gotten so far, I think you guys are in for a treat :)

Can't wait. Keep up the good work and when the inevitable criticism comes, ignore the haters.

> when the inevitable criticism comes, ignore the haters

What if the criticism is correct?

Re: Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k

#54
post #37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really big if. If it's truly open source then there will also be multiple contributors. Who do you pay? People always say this "open source doesn't mean you're not allowed to sell it!" and that's technically correct, but I don't think this strategy has ever been demonstrated to be economically feasible.

Red hat is a billion dollar company.

So you're saying he should sell IDE support? How does that business model work?

People always respond with "Red Hat" in this argument and it never makes any sense. Why doesn't anybody think anymore?

Re: Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k

#55
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's most exciting about this whole thing, is the prospect of a new and potentially, hopefully, more flexible mode of sustenance for software developers world wide. The initial financial risk of the develop first, market later model seems to be greatly mitigated by the kickstarter approach. The market can be validated in real terms, with real money , before a developer has to take the plunge. Striking out on your o…

I advise caution - successful funding does not yet mean successful product. The greatest threat to Kick-starter is the strong potential for projects to devolve into marketing drives for funding followed by people running off with the money, because they have no liability. One of the big budget endeavours will fail to come to fruition, and the entire internet will throw a gasket, and then we will see if the model is s…

I can attest to that. My project met it's goal of $25k over a year ago when the largest project was still I think $200k is still low enough that the market and product needs to be vetted. Pebble at $10M isn't such. Only they can screw it up themselves at this point.

Re: Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k

#58
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again Red Hat's value add is the support. Red Hat's business model is not to rely on its customers' altruism. There are various reasons to dislike such a model, especially for an IDE, not the least of which is that the point of a well-designed IDE like LightTable is that it's easy to use and does not require a support contract. Being a support company creates the conflicting incentive that the software should no…

There are various reasons to dislike such a model, especially for an IDE, not the least of which is that the point of a well-designed IDE like LightTable is that it's easy to use and does not require a support contract. Lots of BigCo are paranoid about the support contract thing. Sometimes partners and investors want to see support contracts in place as a security blanket. In those cases, the support contract for a "…

Yes, indeed. JetBrains uses a closed source model and that works really well (they have a "lite" open source version, but the version they earn money from is closed source). I'm not saying that you shouldn't do support at all, just that it shouldn't be your primary business model.

Re: Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k

#59

I'm complete ignorant at programming languages. But I've seen this video a few times, and it still seem like each feature are things I already do every single day of my life as an Android developer. Live documentation, organizing your work around functions, watching values and expressions change on debug etc. These are all things I already do every day. So suppose lighttable adds support for Android development. How…

Hmm. I work with Eclipse a lot, but this is not just visual. Maybe I use something different but the way of organizing your methods on screen and the actual live coding I don't have in Eclipse. We're not talking 'debug' here; we're talking live coding. Did you check videos like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XUWpze_A_s If you can do that with Eclipse & Android, please tell me how because then I have been stupid (which is very possible: I haven't changed my toolchain in a while).
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