Ew
Light Table - a new IDE concept
211–220 of 315 posts
Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#212Isn'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…
Iyc
Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#213- 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…
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Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#214Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#215I've unfortunately had to spend a great deal of time working with Labview (a graphical engineering software development environment that works based on data flow. Functions are represented by blocks with terminals for input and output data. You wire functions together to pass data between them). Some aspects are horrible (primarily the maintainability of anything more than a trivial application), but they also do some interesting things that I thought were quite parallel to this demonstration.
Documentation is quite well embedded into the software, and comes up with a similar box detailing the docs for every function you come across. The system also shows you the flow of data through a programme, allowing you to debug and see the data types moving between functions. You can dive into sub-functions and see what data's moving through them. Debugging can be fantastically quick if you constructed your programme carefully. If you didn't though, it's hell (see the point about maintainability).
Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#216The last example, where the code called within a block is shown to its right, is something that I've often tried to do statically, manually when first trying to learn a large code base. I would want this for that alone. The fact that what's shown is live-ish is a big, diabetic coma-inducing glob of icing on the cake.
Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm not sure I agree. Textmate made a crap ton of money, companies like JetBrains and DevExpress have made very successful businesses building dev tools. And while you mention MSFT as building a platform, if VS alone can make a billion, even without a platform I suspect you could do quite well.
when you say that VS can make a billion, I assume you refer to sales revenues. I always thought MSFT spent more money developing their programming tools than they got in revenue (which makes sense for them because more developers for Windows lead to more licensed users of Windows)
Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spreadsheets would be nicer if they had a coherent dataflow model. Some spreadsheet programs do this automatically, but it could be a great place for a visual programming language too. One ugly pattern that I'm often doing is to set a column with values by the function "A3=A2" and dragging that down. This gives a column of constant values which are tweakable by tweaking just the first element. That's what a scalar va…
Spreadsheets would be nicer if they had a coherent dataflow model. What do you mean by "coherent dataflow model"? (I'm working on these problems - hence all the questions.) This gives a column of constant values which are tweakable by tweaking just the first element. That's what a scalar variable looks like in a spreadsheet. Why not just put the value in a cell and reference that cell absolutely? With some visual tin…
Maybe by "coherent dataflow model" he means some separation between what's an input to any given operation, so you can see what data is going where and how instead of it being scattered all over the place. That's what I'd like, anyway.
What it looks like to me is more like a program than a table, but with really good list/table entry and flow arrangement tools. That may just be because I'm a programmer.
Can you share anything more about what you're working on? These are interesting problems to me, too.
Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#219This looks great. What about code that has side-effects?
Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept
#220For 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 thou…
Oh wow. I've never used APL but this demo of it always blows me away http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4&feature=youtu...