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The future is specific

chris-granger.com

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Re: The future is specific

#21

Post by ori_b »

ibdknox wrote: post #11
lubutu wrote: post #6

I don't quite understand what the difference is between Light Table's modes and IDEs' plugins. Domain-specific components are exactly what make IDEs 'integrated'; without them they are generalised editors. But there is absolutely no difference, as far as I can tell, between Light Table's new SQL mode and an SQL IDE plugin. I'm personally much more fond of the Unix 'tool approach', in which there are no task-specific…

Sure, anything can be built given enough time :) The difference is that those modes can be built in a couple of hours with arbitrary UI and virtually any interactions you can think of. It's hard for me to imagine being able to build any of the things I showed in say Eclipse in any reasonable amount of time. The idea is that Light Table will be built from the ground up to support very dynamic environmental contexts in…

So, an IDE with a better plugin API?

Re: The future is specific

#23

Post by artursapek »

ibdknox wrote: post #11
lubutu wrote: post #6

I don't quite understand what the difference is between Light Table's modes and IDEs' plugins. Domain-specific components are exactly what make IDEs 'integrated'; without them they are generalised editors. But there is absolutely no difference, as far as I can tell, between Light Table's new SQL mode and an SQL IDE plugin. I'm personally much more fond of the Unix 'tool approach', in which there are no task-specific…

Sure, anything can be built given enough time :) The difference is that those modes can be built in a couple of hours with arbitrary UI and virtually any interactions you can think of. It's hard for me to imagine being able to build any of the things I showed in say Eclipse in any reasonable amount of time. The idea is that Light Table will be built from the ground up to support very dynamic environmental contexts in…

So Light Table is a rapid prototyping tool?

Re: The future is specific

#24

Post by victork2 »

lubutu wrote: post #6

I don't quite understand what the difference is between Light Table's modes and IDEs' plugins. Domain-specific components are exactly what make IDEs 'integrated'; without them they are generalised editors. But there is absolutely no difference, as far as I can tell, between Light Table's new SQL mode and an SQL IDE plugin. I'm personally much more fond of the Unix 'tool approach', in which there are no task-specific…

Same. At least you have my upvote, for what it's worth!

Light table looks to me (with all the respect due to the work of the authors) like a fad where people get all hyped up about a product. I mean there's nothing revolutionary and while looking at the video I was thinking "boy this is too confusing!". I also believe that when the project is going to have 500+ lines of code per file, the way it's done now, is going to be horrible to deal with it!

There are other stuff that bug me out: when I program I don't want rounded borders and everything. I don't want 40 different colors.

But if people are going to be it, great.

Re: The future is specific

#25

Post by qiemem »

bnegreve wrote: post #13

Being specific is not a feature, this is what you do when you have no other way to solve a problem. The ambitious challenge raised by Light Table was to generalize Bret Victor's ideas to general programming, if they are unable to do this, I'll stick to my IDE.

Bret Victor's ideas apply differently to different problem domains. This was very apparent from his talk. It looks like Chris is trying to build a platform that makes applying Bret's ideas very simple and natural. Also, I assume that many of these modes will be generalized and available out of the box, so all you have to do is the pick the one that best suits your needs for any given task.

Re: The future is specific

#26

Post by kamaal »

I don't mind if the future is specific. But its really wrong to say IDE's like Eclipse don't do one specific task well.

Eclipse really makes Java programming very easy. And I can tell you minus Eclipse programming in Java would be a very frustrating experience, given the verbosity, configuration mess and XML's all over the place. Eclipse these days is advanced enough to really blur the difference between and novice and a expert Java programmers. So by any measure I would say eclipse already does what light table aims to do. The only problem with eclipse is its too heavy, chews a lot of memory and becomes very heavy as things go on.

What we expect from light table is really what things like Emacs and Vim already are, plus what they miss. Which is modern GUI candy, easy configuration, availability of packages, stuff like refactoring, bench marking, auto complete and Intellisense easily available out of the box. Along with evolution with modern needs and demands.

So that is why what we really needed was an Emacs + all that I mentioned.

I think it will be nice if at some point requirements are frozen for Light table. Because things like this really slip into Second systems effect easily.

According to me Light Table must be Emacs for the Modern Generation. Anything else, and it won't be impressive. A thin editor, extensible by lisp. All lisp and other Emacs editor goodies but with all the modern demands.

We already have enough of other kind of IDE's.

Re: The future is specific

#27

Post by socksy »

ibdknox wrote: post #17
ulf wrote: post #16

Looks more promising every time! While I like the idea to not work on your stuff as files, I have a question in that regard: Do you have specific plans on how to incorporate version control when not primarily relying on files?

It's still serializing to files - it has to, our workflows are entirely dependent on them :)

Are you developing Light Table using Light Table? If not, is that a future aim?

Re: The future is specific

#28

Post by gumuz »

viscanti wrote: post #19
gumuz wrote: post #5

I love it, especially the grouping of files: route + models + templates, in 1 view is something I see a use for. Does anyone know of an editor which can do something similar?

Plenty of editors offer split view editing. You'll need to actually open the route, model and template files, but it's easy enough to have them all open at the same time. The real challenge here is how they'll handle larger files (real-world production code rarely is that small and clean, you almost always have complex logic and a number of database calls).

isn't it the idea to forget about files, so I can see the models & and views I'm interested in in for a particular workflow. Regardles of where & which file they're located in?

Re: The future is specific

#30

Post by moe »

DasIch wrote: post #10

The first time I heard about Light Table I was rather critical but this begins to look like something that could really replace vim for me. This is rather surprising given my general distaste of IDEs.

Same here.

As much as I like vim - it remains software from the stone age and it seems absurd that our main work interface (editor and shell) still consists of an emulated 1980s text-mode terminal.

LightTable looks like a major step in the right direction. I think the best indicator for success will be when the vim/emacs-diehards start porting their respective shortcuts and functionality over.

I could very well see this fundamental approach (modular/dynamically expanding interface) become the new paradigm for editors and (hopefully) terminals if the author manages to make the prototype versatile and hacker-friendly enough.

We've really been entrapped inside ancient TTY-emulations and inadequate GUI-widget sets for way too long.

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