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The future is specific

chris-granger.com

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Re: The future is specific

#81

Post by spiffworks »

JimmyL wrote: post #41

>> The future of tools isn't in a better Eclipse or Visual Studio, it's in easily created domain specific experiences. How is that goal different from that of the Eclipse platform ( http://www.eclipse.org/platform/overview.php ) - a common base where people can develop individual add-ons to suit the domain they're working on? Eclipse platform and LT clearly have different interaction models and technologies, but from…

> But you know what else is pretty good? PyDev

It's not. It's really not. I've heard good things about PyCharm, but the best environment for Python that I have seen so far is Emacs. And Light Table definitely looks like an improvement on that. My only concern with this is the speed. I want this to have the same response time as Emacs or Vim. Then there would be no reason not to use it.

Re: The future is specific

#83

Post by its_so_on »

prospero wrote: post #75
its_so_on wrote: post #73

March of the specific. Google didn't win by being the best general-purpose search, where people go to look for anything on the Internet. It won by being the best for searching only um, okay not the best example. Facebook didn't just raise 14billion at a valuation of 100billion by being the best general-purpose social network, where just anyone would have a profile. It won by being the best network for, uh.. Okay, not…

All of your examples are gestalts . They're not single seamless abstractions, they're patchworks that are more than the sum of their parts. That's precisely what is being proposed here: a platform for creating a development environment that is more than the sum of its parts. Something that gives you composable pieces that can be fit together into something that maps directly onto your problem space. Is this really so…

Well, I looked at the "gestalt" Wikipedia article. As near as I can make out, you're saying that Google in fact highly tailors its search-for-geneticists, which has nothing to do with its search-for-bakers: it seems like a single whole, but isn't. But that patently isn't so. Patently, every niche runs off the same algorithms. Equally, bankers' circle of friends use the same facebook that teenagers' circle of friends use: it isn't multitudinous facebooks that seem to be one but are really quite different. Likewise jeans in jeans-and-a-blazer are obviously the same jeans as jeans in jeans-and-a-tshirt. iPad apps are built with the very same SDK and frequently have very similar UI/UX. There is literally nothing domain-specific about objective c. I will grant you that Amazon's cloud stuff is very different from its merchandizing operations, but beyond that I don't see where the big difference between shipping books and shipping dry cereal is, which is two businesses that Amazon is now in. In fact, if anything, Amazon's cloud services are the OPPOSITE of domain-specific: Reddit, which includes ZERO filesharing, is on it, and so is Dropbox, which is basically ONLY filesharing. If you look at what Amazon is actually exposing with AWS, you will see it is as generic and non-domain-specific as theoretically possible. Heck, they've even abstracted away the individual server! (So the last bastion of something that might separate a database-heavy user site from a disk-heavy backup site disappears). I would say that their whole movement is towards being non-specific.

You probably understand what you're saying better than I do, so please do explain. Because from where I'm standing, it seems the whole march of the Internet is in busting domain-specific-languages and approaches. Every time a cute hack with CSS hits the front page, it's proof that CSS derives its power precisely from not being a domain specific language. Off-hand, can you name a single domain-specific language or approach that has really 'won'?

You may know more about this than I do, so it is certainly a genuine question.

Re: The future is specific

#84

Post by roguecoder »

chrismcbride wrote: post #37
kamaal wrote: post #26

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 a…

I think Light Tables target is dynamic languages, which the current crop of IDEs dont have great support for.

If we assume dynamic languages are the future, then scripting is absolutely the right answer.

However, what I see is people using dynamic languages because they are what frameworks are written in, not because they want to use a dynamic language. I hope that LightTable incorporates a packaging mechanism such that we can have a Ruby on Rails package, for example, and the 60% of RoR developers who never tweak anything can be more productive.

The problem is that you can give an excellent developer an unspecified tool and they will make it serve their purpose. We need the ability to pass those productivity improvements down the food chain, which is where Emacs fails utterly.

Re: The future is specific

#85

Post by [deleted] »

ibdknox wrote: post #36
kamaal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think from the discussions and other threads what I infer is that we need a total re-look at the concept of an editor, Your way actually looks good. Except that we need to retain the 'Emacs infrastructure'. We need to really keep Lisp as the extension language. I think what we need is Light Table with something like this : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/568774734/emacsy-an-embe... You have to develop Light Tab…

Lisp is the extension language :) Everything so far is Clojure + ClojureScript with the language backends written in the language they support (python in python and so on)

[deleted]

Re: The future is specific

#86

Post by phyzome »

mattbriggs wrote: post #33
ibdknox wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These were examples of extensions to make a point and not at all what we'll be focusing on. What we're making sure of is that the platform for such things exists and enables all of the things that old UI's and such don't allow. I think the parallel to emacs is a good one and while I certainly won't say at this point that we'll be the "modern emacs", it's our hope we can come close.

out of curiosity, is js going to be your "elisp"?

Clojurescript, actually -- a Clojure dialect that compiles to JS.

Well, Clojure too, on the server side of things.

Re: The future is specific

#87

Post by phyzome »

its_so_on wrote: post #83
prospero wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of your examples are gestalts . They're not single seamless abstractions, they're patchworks that are more than the sum of their parts. That's precisely what is being proposed here: a platform for creating a development environment that is more than the sum of its parts. Something that gives you composable pieces that can be fit together into something that maps directly onto your problem space. Is this really so…

Well, I looked at the "gestalt" Wikipedia article. As near as I can make out, you're saying that Google in fact highly tailors its search-for-geneticists, which has nothing to do with its search-for-bakers: it seems like a single whole, but isn't. But that patently isn't so. Patently, every niche runs off the same algorithms. Equally, bankers' circle of friends use the same facebook that teenagers' circle of friends…

You're saying that CSS isn't domain-specific?

Re: The future is specific

#89

Post by skrebbel »

A 'macro system for tools'. Isn't this what the academic bozos call Language Workbenches?

Extensible tool-building platforms for DSLs are hardly anything new. Reading things like this, i sometimes worry that the HN-circling web crowd is reinventing things that others invented just a few years ago. Like some sort of collective not-invented-here syndrome.

E.g. Check out MetaEdit+ - their website isn't Silicon Valley Sexy, but the tool is amazing. And has been, for the past 10+ years. http://www.metacase.com/mep/

Now, there's plenty new and well-rehashed ideas in Light Table. I'll be buying a license, probably. But the insight in this article isn't very new at all.

Re: The future is specific

#90

Post by its_so_on »

phyzome wrote: post #87
its_so_on wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I looked at the "gestalt" Wikipedia article. As near as I can make out, you're saying that Google in fact highly tailors its search-for-geneticists, which has nothing to do with its search-for-bakers: it seems like a single whole, but isn't. But that patently isn't so. Patently, every niche runs off the same algorithms. Equally, bankers' circle of friends use the same facebook that teenagers' circle of friends…

You're saying that CSS isn't domain-specific?

The more and more you can do with it, clearly it's becoming less and less domain-specific.

http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/amazing.html

or just google for hackernews posts like entirely in css, pure css, all in css, etc. Hell from a quick glance it seems that if you google for 'in css' half the posts on hackernews are like that...

http://y.ww.com/item?id=2636440

It's not hard to see where this is going...

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