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Light Table - a new IDE concept

chris-granger.com

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Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#121

Post by kooshball »

pragmatic wrote: post #69

"...but there's no reason this couldn't be done for any language with a dynamic runtime." With your (ibdknox) background, could this work for c#/f#? I like Visual Studio, but I feel more and more it gets in my way when I'm debugging/navigating code. There is too much "chrome"/widgets/toolbars and hundreds of specialized windows, each with their own chrome that eat up precious space on my 27" monitor. When I use it on…

> I like Visual Studio, but I feel more and more it gets in my way when I'm debugging/navigating code. There is too much "chrome"/widgets/toolbars and hundreds of specialized windows, each with their own chrome that eat up precious space on my 27" monitor.

Chrome eat up space on a 27" monitor? Not sure if you're actually being serious here since a 27" monitor probably has 2560x1440 resolution which is gigantic compared to the chrome. Furthermore, you can customize the UI to disable every toolbar manually. Or in VS2010, there is a full screen mode where it hides all the toolbars from every side, and shows a basic text editor. That's probably what you want.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zainnab/archive/2010/07/17/full-scre...

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#122

Post by roguecoder »

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.

Less likely than our generation having no idea how CPU branching mechanisms work. Files are still how the vast majority of people, coders and non-coders, interact with their documents and data artifacts and organize backups. Anything deeper than that should be abstracted away, since it's subject to change.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#123

Post by cldwalker »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #118

Where is the download link? Just please don't let it become another Code Bubbles - a nice idea, breathtaking video, and no working tool available in the coming years.

Indeed, love the idea but not the transparency. Disappointing to see closed-source, demo-only videos on the top of HN.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#124

Post by robomartin »

For years I've been bothered by the fact that we still use ASCII text-based documents to program. Having spent a good deal of time programing in APL, a language that uses symbols extensively, I'd like to think that I saw just how different things could be.

Having said that, every time I've looked into graphical programming paradigms they almost always seem to fall apart or get in the way of translating ideas and thoughts into machine instructions.

In the end, at least for me, it's about having an environment and a language that gets out of the way and let's me program the way you'd play the piano: The music just flows and the technical bits that make it happen are invisible.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#125

Post by david927 »

timdorr wrote: post #89
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…

Kickstarter is for products, YC is for businesses. (More or less, I'm not saying it's black and white)

Kickstarter is product-focused, YC is founder-focused.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#129

Post by madhadron »

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'm sad to see the current generation of programmers who don't understand that a hierarchical filesystem is one possible choice for organizing data on an underlying storage medium.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#130

Post by puredanger »

ibdknox wrote: post #54
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 :)

You could just sample and show an example - that's good enough for many uses.
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