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Appeals to emotion don't really tell me what makes Light Table innovative. You say there is, "something special," about it. What is it? It takes either hubris

Appeals to emotion don't really tell me what makes Light Table innovative. You say there is, "something special," about it. What is it? It takes either hubris or ignorance to believe your ideas are completely original. Whether Chris is aware of it or not, Light Table is not a new idea. I'm not suggesting it isn't a good one because I believe it is. However the way he worded his post suggests to me that he is probably not aware of the giants upon whose shoulders he now stands. Nobody just picked up a guitar and invented rock-and-roll. The theory or relativity didn't just come to Einstein one day. No good idea is born in a vacuum. I only rain on the parade a little in the hopes that his writing will improve and to raise awareness in people who aren't aware that these are good ideas and that there have been many attempts to develop them.

seanmcdirmid 14y ago
Light Table's layout and association between code and UI is much more direct than Smalltalk's; I would say its even better when you consider morphic. The way they've reified execution is also nicely done (seeing what objects exist as they are created). There is a lot of innovations here, and yes, they are probably building on 20 years of related work THAT GO WAY BEYOND SMALLTALK. If he goes into a smalltalk credit, why not Lisp machines? Why not VPLs? Why not every little research project that has attempted this in the past (including my own work)? And he is still correct: the vast majority of programmers haven't been influenced by this at all, we failed, and he is trying again hopefully with something that will work! If he was writing a technical paper, then he could discuss everything in a related work section; but it was a strangeloop talk + blog post, what kind of rigor are you expecting?
- agentultra 14y ago
  Why not simply be more aware of those things? His blog post made sweeping generalizations about what programming was like twenty years ago that are clearly inaccurate at their worst or at least misleading at best. He doesn't need to cite anything. He could just make fewer generalizations of the sort in his post. Many programmers from twenty years ago were working on the very kinds of projects he is today. His might be better for many reasons than those early attempts but he does himself and his audience a disservice by not being aware of them.
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    What does "many" mean? 10? 20? Out of how many programmers who were active back then? 20 years ago most programmers were not using Smalltalk or lisp machines or whatever, even if those things existed they weren't used often, so the author is technically correct about the "state of the art" with the caveat that their were many attempts to go beyond this but nothing got any traction. Also, you are incorrect about 20 years ago. The first example of liveness and directness in programming was in...1962 with the Sutherland/Sketchpad demo. 50 years ago.
    - tluyben2 14y ago
      I think 20 years ago would've been a good time to really hardcore market those environments. As a new student with a profitable software company, I would've been interested in this. However I never heard about these technologies until much later; C(++) & Pascal (Modula) and 'rapid' friends Clipper (for business applications) and such were things popular then. Not sure how it was in the US then, but in the EU I didn't see much promotion going on for Smalltalk/Lisp and I didn't know anyone outside uni using those languages. So I think Chris is right there; most programmers will never have seen anything like this in their lives nor do they know it exists, even if they were around in the 80s/90s or earlier when they could've known.
    - agentultra 14y ago
      Indeed! The Sketchpad demo. The Mother of All Demos (Englebart who basically conceived of hyper-media and the future of knowledge work). The Symbolics lisp machines. It's all really cool stuff. I'm really glad that Light Table is making it popular again. Maybe this time we can at least give a nod to where these ideas come from so that more people can be aware. New instead of novel.

seanmcdirmid 14y ago

Light Table's layout and association between code and UI is much more direct than Smalltalk's; I would say its even better when you consider morphic. The way they've reified execution is also nicely done (seeing what objects exist as they are created). There is a lot of innovations here, and yes, they are probably building on 20 years of related work THAT GO WAY BEYOND SMALLTALK. If he goes into a smalltalk credit, why not Lisp machines? Why not VPLs? Why not every little research project that has attempted this in the past (including my own work)? And he is still correct: the vast majority of programmers haven't been influenced by this at all, we failed, and he is trying again hopefully with something that will work! If he was writing a technical paper, then he could discuss everything in a related work section; but it was a strangeloop talk + blog post, what kind of rigor are you expecting?

agentultra 14y ago
Why not simply be more aware of those things? His blog post made sweeping generalizations about what programming was like twenty years ago that are clearly inaccurate at their worst or at least misleading at best. He doesn't need to cite anything. He could just make fewer generalizations of the sort in his post. Many programmers from twenty years ago were working on the very kinds of projects he is today. His might be better for many reasons than those early attempts but he does himself and his audience a disservice by not being aware of them.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  What does "many" mean? 10? 20? Out of how many programmers who were active back then? 20 years ago most programmers were not using Smalltalk or lisp machines or whatever, even if those things existed they weren't used often, so the author is technically correct about the "state of the art" with the caveat that their were many attempts to go beyond this but nothing got any traction. Also, you are incorrect about 20 years ago. The first example of liveness and directness in programming was in...1962 with the Sutherland/Sketchpad demo. 50 years ago.
  - tluyben2 14y ago
    I think 20 years ago would've been a good time to really hardcore market those environments. As a new student with a profitable software company, I would've been interested in this. However I never heard about these technologies until much later; C(++) & Pascal (Modula) and 'rapid' friends Clipper (for business applications) and such were things popular then. Not sure how it was in the US then, but in the EU I didn't see much promotion going on for Smalltalk/Lisp and I didn't know anyone outside uni using those languages. So I think Chris is right there; most programmers will never have seen anything like this in their lives nor do they know it exists, even if they were around in the 80s/90s or earlier when they could've known.
  - agentultra 14y ago
    Indeed! The Sketchpad demo. The Mother of All Demos (Englebart who basically conceived of hyper-media and the future of knowledge work). The Symbolics lisp machines. It's all really cool stuff. I'm really glad that Light Table is making it popular again. Maybe this time we can at least give a nod to where these ideas come from so that more people can be aware. New instead of novel.