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Light Table - a new IDE concept

chris-granger.com

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Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#171

Post by tbatterii »

peteforde wrote: post #167
tbatterii wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes worry that a new generation of "programmers" will emerge who have no understanding of how the underlying anything works. For as useful as sites like stackoverflow are for sharing knowledge, it is potentially encouraging a generation of copy/paste coders who's job it is to find and glue snippets together until they get the desired outcome. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm starting think some knowledge needs…

Your mention of .frx files just gave me a potent flashback, complete with psychosomatic hives.

yeah sorry about that. I wish I could forget about *.frx and regsvr32 and VSS.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#172

Post by gruseom »

nikcub wrote: post #144
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…

Excel + VBA solves a lot of that. The spreadsheet part just becomes a view. Somebody should really build a web app version of that, there are millions of custom Excel+VBA spreadsheets spread throughout businesses across the world. The only way they will migrate online is either through custom web apps (I used to do a lot of those) or with a generic solution which doesn't exist yet.

To migrate them online, do you think what's needed is a single-click "just upload your Excel spreadsheet and it will all work, including the VBA"? That is, how important is 100% compatibility, including VBA? (The technical bar for that is pretty high.)

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#173

Post by bgruber »

kevinpet wrote: post #158
sehugg wrote: post #41

Whenever I get the chance to use a spreadsheet, I really enjoy it. I find it really satisfying to set up cascading functions and see them update in real-time. I'd like to see that experience translated to general programming. I'd like to update code and see the unit tests update automatically, and an understandable representation of the objects being manipulated.

"I'd like to update code and see the unit tests update automatically" I think you have that a bit backwards there. I want to write the tests and have my code automatically update to make them pass.

http://blip.tv/clojure/dan-friedman-and-william-byrd-minikan...

19:20

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#174

Post by Auxon »

Great work, and I'm impressed at how quickly Chris Granger created Light Table. I wonder how hard it would be to build an IDE for Meteor (EDIT: I mean get JS support in Light Table, since Meteor is just JS) - how amazing would that be. Or port Meteor to Clojure and wow ... these combined would be amazing.

I've believed for a long time that files were archaic and agree completely - and we should extend that idea to version control. If we version functions (and classes, stored procs, etc...) then you can create a type of failover to a last known good version down to that logical function.

As for the rest of the ideas - the table, organize and layout related code, the documentation and the interface are all terrific ideas and I can't wait to see where it goes. Imagine laying out all that code on a nice huge touch tablet with multi-touch support ... drool....

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#175

Post by michaelfeathers »

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…

True, Smalltalkers were there first. The thing I like.. the further enhancement here.. is the UI. No more tiles and windows.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#176

Post by dampier »

This fills me with hope.

Functionally striking, visually beautiful -- it makes me feel suddenly like things are coming together in a way that might stick this time around.

In form: Value placed on aesthetics -- beautiful & functional design -- is a concept that's taken root in the marketplace at large.

In code: Like gfodor commented, it feels like the doors are open wider than they've been in a long time to new ideas, and that we see some elegant language mechanisms being rediscovered and rising to the top.

In tools: The same pattern ... with lots of points of reference, a critical mass of seekers and open source contributors, and bootstrapped on powerful tools that allow rapid expression of new ideas, the good ones see the light of day and, if successful, can take an advantage of an unprecedented kinetics of this ecology to rise to viability and then prominence.

I hope you'll forgive me if I'm blowing this out of proportion to wax elegiac or whatever -- it just suddenly feels like a good day to be a programmer.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#177

Post by dampier »

This fills me with hope.

Functionally striking, visually beautiful -- it makes me feel suddenly like things are coming together in a way that might stick this time around.

In form: Value placed on aesthetics -- beautiful & functional design -- is a concept that's taken root in the marketplace at large.

In code: Like gfodor commented, it feels like the doors are open wider than they've been in a long time to new ideas, and that we see some elegant language mechanisms being rediscovered and rising to the top.

In tools: The same pattern ... with lots of points of reference, a critical mass of seekers and open source contributors, and bootstrapped on powerful tools that allow rapid expression of new ideas, the good ones see the light of day and, if successful, can take an advantage of an unprecedented kinetics of this ecology to rise to viability and then prominence.

I hope you'll forgive me if I'm blowing this out of proportion to wax elegiac or whatever -- it just suddenly feels like a good day to be a programmer.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#179

Post by mgunes »

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…

Field (http://openendedgroup.com/field) is a modern programming environment that embraces most (if not all) of these principles.
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