6 ms·

Why can't they say that Light Table is a dead end and they discovered something else in the process (Eve)?

by dodyg 12y ago

freehunter 12y ago
Because people gave money via Kickstarter for LightTable. Abandoning it unfinished likely wouldn't go over well.
- general_failure 12y ago
  Not sure about that. They got 2.3M for eve.
- masukomi 12y ago
  it's.... it's software. Complex software (like an editor) is never finished. At some point all software is eventually abandoned. Thus all complex software is abandoned in an unfinished state. This is a simple truth. For my part I think they've delivered on the spirit of their Kickstarter. They released a very usable editor that does some amazing shit. It doesn't have every feature in the Kickstarter video, but that's because reality kicked in and they had to prioritize, and found that some of the features didn't work out as well when put to other users.
scrollaway 12y ago
While freehunter is right, I think it's more that LightTable is too unfinished to be considered dead. LT fills multiple spaces in the area of IDEs: - An extremely-programmable IDE (there's no other one like it) - A lightweight generic IDE (there's REALLY no other one like it). I almost wouldn't call it an IDE but it's more than a text editor... it's right in the middle of the two and it's great to have something fill that gap, especially for languages that don't always need full-blown IDE support (like python and clojure)
- icebraining 12y ago
  I never used LT, but that description sounds like Emacs to me.
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    Heh okay, emacs is extremely programmable. I don't really consider it an IDE but that's fair. It'd take a long time to explain the differences but emacs is far from lightweight, it's a beast. LT is very barebones. And LT is written in HTML/CSS/CLJS which makes it stylable and programmable as such, a real advantage over emacs.
    - tuhdo 12y ago
      You can customize style as much as you can. Take a look at Emacs theme gallery: http://pawelbx.github.io/emacs-theme-gallery/ http://pawelbx.github.io/emacs-theme-gallery/ Emacs is an IDE, first and foremost, to Emacs Lisp itself. Other Lisps are close. It's an excellent editors for other languages, and a good enough IDE for some languages. See my C/C++ guide in Emacs: http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html. Fyi, people wrote parsers, chat and email clients in Emacs that LT is still dreaming.
- gagege 12y ago
  I don't even use Emacs, and what you just described sounds like Emacs. That said, LightTable is a lot more noob friendly than Emacs.
  - Blackthorn 12y ago
    I use Emacs every day, and I think Emacs makes a terrible IDE or anything resembling an IDE. It's too slow, the GUI is too primitive, there's a whole host of other problems. I'll dump Emacs the instant something that fixes those issues comes around.
    - hollerith 12y ago
      Am curious what exactly is too slow about Emacs. What operations, I mean.
      - Blackthorn 12y ago
        A few things are either slow, highly annoying, broken, or all three: etags -- it's just an nightmare, full stop. It only gets you where you want to go half the time at most. And then because the GUI is so primitive you can't do basic things like click on a symbol and have it jump you to the definition, you're stuck using the keyboard interface designed for work in a terminal. An etags that actually worked properly is one of the most basic things that could improve my productivity monumentally. CEDET -- last used about 5 years ago, gave up because on larger files/projects it would just hang my editor for a few seconds as it processed. Variable/symbol completion -- see etags. I'm not doing a very good job communicating my dislikes / pain points because I'm not very good at communicating. Please do not respond with a "but these aren't problems because..." because they are problems for me, I just do a poor job of communicating.
        jimbokun 12y ago
        I think you communicated your pain points well, because they are my pain points as well. I gave up on emacs for Java development for the reasons you cited, but I still use it for REPL style development (Jython, Ruby Motion, XQuery, as a few current examples).
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Xerox PARC OSes?
- zem 12y ago
  i've not used lighttable, but as far as filling in the space between editor and ide goes, geany does a decent job. it doesn't have a ton of features, and the plugin mechanism is some combination of C and lua (which raises the entry barrier a bit), but it's definitely targeting that exact space.
eevilspock 12y ago
It's open source. On GitHub. It's only dead if no one cares enough.
- nazgob 12y ago
  It's a big and complex project. Not that easy to just jump in and finish IDE.
jimbokun 12y ago
That is precisely what this comment says: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395319

Why can't they say that Light Table is a dead end and they discovered something else in the process (Eve)?

by dodyg 12y ago

Why can't they say that Light Table is a dead end and they discovered something else in the process (Eve)?

freehunter 12y ago

Because people gave money via Kickstarter for LightTable. Abandoning it unfinished likely wouldn't go over well.

general_failure 12y ago
Not sure about that. They got 2.3M for eve.
masukomi 12y ago
it's.... it's software. Complex software (like an editor) is never finished. At some point all software is eventually abandoned. Thus all complex software is abandoned in an unfinished state. This is a simple truth. For my part I think they've delivered on the spirit of their Kickstarter. They released a very usable editor that does some amazing shit. It doesn't have every feature in the Kickstarter video, but that's because reality kicked in and they had to prioritize, and found that some of the features didn't work out as well when put to other users.

scrollaway 12y ago

While freehunter is right, I think it's more that LightTable is too unfinished to be considered dead. LT fills multiple spaces in the area of IDEs: - An extremely-programmable IDE (there's no other one like it) - A lightweight generic IDE (there's REALLY no other one like it). I almost wouldn't call it an IDE but it's more than a text editor... it's right in the middle of the two and it's great to have something fill that gap, especially for languages that don't always need full-blown IDE support (like python and clojure)

icebraining 12y ago
I never used LT, but that description sounds like Emacs to me.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  Heh okay, emacs is extremely programmable. I don't really consider it an IDE but that's fair. It'd take a long time to explain the differences but emacs is far from lightweight, it's a beast. LT is very barebones. And LT is written in HTML/CSS/CLJS which makes it stylable and programmable as such, a real advantage over emacs.
  - tuhdo 12y ago
    You can customize style as much as you can. Take a look at Emacs theme gallery: http://pawelbx.github.io/emacs-theme-gallery/ http://pawelbx.github.io/emacs-theme-gallery/ Emacs is an IDE, first and foremost, to Emacs Lisp itself. Other Lisps are close. It's an excellent editors for other languages, and a good enough IDE for some languages. See my C/C++ guide in Emacs: http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html. Fyi, people wrote parsers, chat and email clients in Emacs that LT is still dreaming.
gagege 12y ago
I don't even use Emacs, and what you just described sounds like Emacs. That said, LightTable is a lot more noob friendly than Emacs.
- Blackthorn 12y ago
  I use Emacs every day, and I think Emacs makes a terrible IDE or anything resembling an IDE. It's too slow, the GUI is too primitive, there's a whole host of other problems. I'll dump Emacs the instant something that fixes those issues comes around.
  - hollerith 12y ago
    Am curious what exactly is too slow about Emacs. What operations, I mean.
    - Blackthorn 12y ago
      A few things are either slow, highly annoying, broken, or all three: etags -- it's just an nightmare, full stop. It only gets you where you want to go half the time at most. And then because the GUI is so primitive you can't do basic things like click on a symbol and have it jump you to the definition, you're stuck using the keyboard interface designed for work in a terminal. An etags that actually worked properly is one of the most basic things that could improve my productivity monumentally. CEDET -- last used about 5 years ago, gave up because on larger files/projects it would just hang my editor for a few seconds as it processed. Variable/symbol completion -- see etags. I'm not doing a very good job communicating my dislikes / pain points because I'm not very good at communicating. Please do not respond with a "but these aren't problems because..." because they are problems for me, I just do a poor job of communicating.
      - jimbokun 12y ago
        I think you communicated your pain points well, because they are my pain points as well. I gave up on emacs for Java development for the reasons you cited, but I still use it for REPL style development (Jython, Ruby Motion, XQuery, as a few current examples).
pjmlp 12y ago
Xerox PARC OSes?
zem 12y ago
i've not used lighttable, but as far as filling in the space between editor and ide goes, geany does a decent job. it doesn't have a ton of features, and the plugin mechanism is some combination of C and lua (which raises the entry barrier a bit), but it's definitely targeting that exact space.

eevilspock 12y ago

It's open source. On GitHub. It's only dead if no one cares enough.

nazgob 12y ago
It's a big and complex project. Not that easy to just jump in and finish IDE.

jimbokun 12y ago

That is precisely what this comment says: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395319