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I'm complete ignorant at programming languages. But I've seen this video a few times, and it still seem like each feature are things I already do every single d

I'm complete ignorant at programming languages. But I've seen this video a few times, and it still seem like each feature are things I already do every single day of my life as an Android developer. Live documentation, organizing your work around functions, watching values and expressions change on debug etc. These are all things I already do every day. So suppose lighttable adds support for Android development. How exactly would lighttable help me? What exactly can I do with it that I cannot do right now? Are you guys backing this up just because it looks visually different? Is it because the languages it supports just don't have good tools for like Java does? Or am I missing something obvious here?

lnanek 14y ago
You sound dead on to me. Java tooling is basically light years ahead of JavaScript, just because it's so much easier to write for a static language. Most people don't learn all the advanced features of Eclipse and other IDEs and debugging until they are stuck writing in them for years and years anyway. I know how to do things in hot keys in Eclipse that I don't even know how to do otherwise. Hot code replace and debugging and all the other stuff is similarly an advanced topic, even for many Java coders, so it is no surprise JavaScript programmers think it is something new.
- tonyarkles 14y ago
  I've done development in Eclipse off and on for a few years. Some Python (PyDev extensions), some Java (Android, school assignments, a desktop app). I haven't tried it all that recently, but one of my biggest complaints has been performance. I end up turning off a significant number of the features that people talk about for Eclipse, simply because they make the environment run too slowly. It's not as if I'm using underpowered machines either...
jakejake 14y ago
I see here a possible cyclic thing happening with development environments. I've watched a lot of friends abandon IDEs in favor of more lean setup like textmate, or going the direction of emacs. Lighttable strikes me as a possible move back towards a full IDE environment. A lot of the things shown here are already available on Eclipse but it's presented here with a much cleaner visual design. The one thing Eclipse doesn't do is the "live" debugging with value substituting. I do think that would be very, very helpful. I could see that being implemented as an Eclipse plugin as well and it would be extremely useful in certain cases.
- DannoHung 14y ago
  I hope LightTable has really good keyboard based controls. The reason I prefer terminal environments more is just being able to not have to constantly mode switch between keyboarding and mouse pointer.
  - jakejake 14y ago
    It seems to be based on http://codemirror.net/ http://codemirror.net/ so you could probably check that out and see the keyboard support. I wonder if the final product will be a browser-based editor as well..?
chadv 14y ago
I don't want to talk for Chris Granger, but my intuition tells me that the features you listed are things he considers to be the baseline for a modern editor and are not the true reason he's building Light Table. I think his goals are more about making a real product with the capabilities of the demo IDE Bret Victor showed in his Inventing on Principle talk https://vimeo.com/36579366 https://vimeo.com/36579366 Eclipse is nowhere near this today, and perhaps it never will be. I'm backing Light Table because I think Chris has a shot of getting there.
jes5199 14y ago
the part where variables turn into literal values for a specific test case - that's something I haven't seen an editor do - is that a mode for IDEs that I don't know about? I just imagined all the time I'll save by never stepping through with a debugger again.
tluyben2 14y ago
Hmm. I work with Eclipse a lot, but this is not just visual. Maybe I use something different but the way of organizing your methods on screen and the actual live coding I don't have in Eclipse. We're not talking 'debug' here; we're talking live coding. Did you check videos like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XUWpze_A_s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XUWpze_A_s If you can do that with Eclipse & Android, please tell me how because then I have been stupid (which is very possible: I haven't changed my toolchain in a while).
- mattmanser 14y ago
  http://www.twitch.tv/notch/b/314380336 http://www.twitch.tv/notch/b/314380336 That's the first video I found on that stream. Note that it's about 50 seconds in that he starts actually editing the code; he edits the slide friction before going up the slope. There's a better one of notch designing a dungeon game for some competition where he's writing the rendering code and it's changing as he does it. That's eclipse right? You can do the same in visual studio as well, just need to have 'edit and continue' enabled. It's one of these magic things that you either know about or don't, but generally if you're a web developer you'll never have needed it. I'm not sure what you mean by We're not talking 'debug' here; as technically that's in debug mode when it's running at the same time as coding. Functionally it seems no different to me. Notice how the 'draw player' function in the clojure example actually contains the variable for color, it's not a pre-initialized variable. I wonder whether storing and changing that elsewhere would have resulted in a colour change (logically I would guess no otherwise the game state would contantly reset).
  - tluyben2 14y ago
    Cool. Yeah I use that and it's interesting how I didn't connect that to light table at all. Must be the bling, but yes, it's the same thing. I guess it's because, like you said, I usually do web dev in Java and don't really need it. In Javascript on the other hand, it would be very welcome (Firebug like stuff but then in IDE). Thanks for the insight. Light table is still an interesting experiment besides anything else.
    - 14y ago

lnanek 14y ago

You sound dead on to me. Java tooling is basically light years ahead of JavaScript, just because it's so much easier to write for a static language. Most people don't learn all the advanced features of Eclipse and other IDEs and debugging until they are stuck writing in them for years and years anyway. I know how to do things in hot keys in Eclipse that I don't even know how to do otherwise. Hot code replace and debugging and all the other stuff is similarly an advanced topic, even for many Java coders, so it is no surprise JavaScript programmers think it is something new.

tonyarkles 14y ago
I've done development in Eclipse off and on for a few years. Some Python (PyDev extensions), some Java (Android, school assignments, a desktop app). I haven't tried it all that recently, but one of my biggest complaints has been performance. I end up turning off a significant number of the features that people talk about for Eclipse, simply because they make the environment run too slowly. It's not as if I'm using underpowered machines either...

jakejake 14y ago

I see here a possible cyclic thing happening with development environments. I've watched a lot of friends abandon IDEs in favor of more lean setup like textmate, or going the direction of emacs. Lighttable strikes me as a possible move back towards a full IDE environment. A lot of the things shown here are already available on Eclipse but it's presented here with a much cleaner visual design. The one thing Eclipse doesn't do is the "live" debugging with value substituting. I do think that would be very, very helpful. I could see that being implemented as an Eclipse plugin as well and it would be extremely useful in certain cases.

DannoHung 14y ago
I hope LightTable has really good keyboard based controls. The reason I prefer terminal environments more is just being able to not have to constantly mode switch between keyboarding and mouse pointer.
- jakejake 14y ago
  It seems to be based on http://codemirror.net/ http://codemirror.net/ so you could probably check that out and see the keyboard support. I wonder if the final product will be a browser-based editor as well..?

chadv 14y ago

I don't want to talk for Chris Granger, but my intuition tells me that the features you listed are things he considers to be the baseline for a modern editor and are not the true reason he's building Light Table. I think his goals are more about making a real product with the capabilities of the demo IDE Bret Victor showed in his Inventing on Principle talk https://vimeo.com/36579366 https://vimeo.com/36579366 Eclipse is nowhere near this today, and perhaps it never will be. I'm backing Light Table because I think Chris has a shot of getting there.

jes5199 14y ago

the part where variables turn into literal values for a specific test case - that's something I haven't seen an editor do - is that a mode for IDEs that I don't know about? I just imagined all the time I'll save by never stepping through with a debugger again.

tluyben2 14y ago

Hmm. I work with Eclipse a lot, but this is not just visual. Maybe I use something different but the way of organizing your methods on screen and the actual live coding I don't have in Eclipse. We're not talking 'debug' here; we're talking live coding. Did you check videos like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XUWpze_A_s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XUWpze_A_s If you can do that with Eclipse & Android, please tell me how because then I have been stupid (which is very possible: I haven't changed my toolchain in a while).

mattmanser 14y ago
http://www.twitch.tv/notch/b/314380336 http://www.twitch.tv/notch/b/314380336 That's the first video I found on that stream. Note that it's about 50 seconds in that he starts actually editing the code; he edits the slide friction before going up the slope. There's a better one of notch designing a dungeon game for some competition where he's writing the rendering code and it's changing as he does it. That's eclipse right? You can do the same in visual studio as well, just need to have 'edit and continue' enabled. It's one of these magic things that you either know about or don't, but generally if you're a web developer you'll never have needed it. I'm not sure what you mean by We're not talking 'debug' here; as technically that's in debug mode when it's running at the same time as coding. Functionally it seems no different to me. Notice how the 'draw player' function in the clojure example actually contains the variable for color, it's not a pre-initialized variable. I wonder whether storing and changing that elsewhere would have resulted in a colour change (logically I would guess no otherwise the game state would contantly reset).
- tluyben2 14y ago
  Cool. Yeah I use that and it's interesting how I didn't connect that to light table at all. Must be the bling, but yes, it's the same thing. I guess it's because, like you said, I usually do web dev in Java and don't really need it. In Javascript on the other hand, it would be very welcome (Firebug like stuff but then in IDE). Thanks for the insight. Light table is still an interesting experiment besides anything else.
  - 14y ago