Light Table - a new IDE concept • Hacker News Board

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#71

Post by jessep » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:27 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #52

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…

Of course this comment was inevitable. If Smalltalkers really believe their environment is the right way to code, their attitude should not be one of "we did this first, meh" but instead be "here's what we did right, here's what we did wrong. heed the lessons of history and good luck, you are on a mission from God." I think with the proper care and nurturing, we could be at the beginning of a renaissance where many o…

why not name names? seems like it could be informative.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#72

Post by jerf » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #64

Am I the only one who wants to see multiple, proportional fonts in editors? Sure, I want to keep the methods themselves in monospaced font, but can't I have the method declaration in a larger size, and comments in a proportional serif? There is a wealth of design experience out there in communicating things better and more quickly with typography, so why do we not take advantage of that in our IDEs?

Because when people try it, it doesn't look or work very well.

I think it's important to understand that this doesn't mean that such things will never work, but it is also important to understand that almost every idea that you've ever heard of has actually been tried lots of times (lots of lots of times in many cases), and there are often good reasons that they haven't actually been adopted.

As others are already pointing out, the linked proposal bears a striking resemblance to what Smalltalk does, so it's more helpful to ask "Why haven't the many attempts at this approach been successful?" than to ask "Why hasn't anyone tried this?" The first may lead you to a successful variant, the second will lead you down the same garden paths that everyone else went down.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#73

Post by pragmatic » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

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 portion of founders might be better off on kickstarter? Unless of course the advice/mentoring/network effect that Y combinator, et al provide is vital to a startups success.

Food for thought.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#74

Post by gfodor » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:31 PM UTC

jessep wrote: post #71

gfodor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course this comment was inevitable. If Smalltalkers really believe their environment is the right way to code, their attitude should not be one of "we did this first, meh" but instead be "here's what we did right, here's what we did wrong. heed the lessons of history and good luck, you are on a mission from God." I think with the proper care and nurturing, we could be at the beginning of a renaissance where many o…

why not name names? seems like it could be informative.

Not in this thread. This is Light Table's moment to shine, don't want to clog it up with such a derail.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#75

Post by chrisaycock » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:32 PM UTC

Radzell wrote: post #57

What language is it? Is the language just specific to that ide or can other language be changed to work with this ide?

He's using ClojureScript. He states at the bottom of the page:

  It's no secret that I really like Clojure and as a lisp,
  it was the easiest language for me to start the prototype
  with, but there's no reason this couldn't be done for any
  language with a dynamic runtime. The rest is mostly simple
  analysis of an AST and some clever inference. So could
  Light Table have used JS instead? Certainly - and
  hopefully it will get there sooner rather than later.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#76

Post by 89a » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:33 PM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #64

Am I the only one who wants to see multiple, proportional fonts in editors? Sure, I want to keep the methods themselves in monospaced font, but can't I have the method declaration in a larger size, and comments in a proportional serif? There is a wealth of design experience out there in communicating things better and more quickly with typography, so why do we not take advantage of that in our IDEs?

Like this? http://i.imgur.com/8XYfb.png

Textmate 2 supports it if that's what you want.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#77

Post by gosub » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:33 PM UTC

Very cool!

There is the part where he calls (x 3) and the number 3 percolates through the definition of x. What would have happened if x was recursive?

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#78

Post by mdwrigh2 » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:34 PM UTC

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…

I can't imagine the monetary investment from YC is more significant than the advice and mentoring that you get. Raising $20k isn't impossibly hard. Finding the right mentors is.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#79

Post by ibdknox » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:35 PM UTC

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…

It could indeed, they'd need to focus on building out the evaluation context (basically a REPL), but as I recall there was a prototype of one somewhere.

Past that, the new Roselyn language models would fill in a bunch of the gaps that would make this particularly hard currently.

The real problem for making it happen in VS is political though :( I actually pitched similar ideas while I was there.

Re: Light Table - a new IDE concept

#80

Post by tikhonj » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 4:36 PM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #64

Am I the only one who wants to see multiple, proportional fonts in editors? Sure, I want to keep the methods themselves in monospaced font, but can't I have the method declaration in a larger size, and comments in a proportional serif? There is a wealth of design experience out there in communicating things better and more quickly with typography, so why do we not take advantage of that in our IDEs?

I don't think anything prevents you from setting comments to be a different size and proportional in current editors. I know that it would be trivial in Emacs; some themes actually do that already.

You can try this by doing M-x modify-face, entering font-lock-comment-face then "DejaVu Sans" (or any other proportional typeface) and pressing enter a bunch of times.