Seconded. I am slightly disappointed by this announcement. I backed LightTable because I really wanted to see an alternative to Emacs (for Clojure development). But I was hoping that by raising funding the team would be able to actually implement the tool. The hard parts. The parts that many projects never get around to implementing, because there is no funding.
I certainly didn't expect the team would be "revisiting some of the foundational ideas of computing" so soon.
LightTable right now is a proof of concept. A very good one, but still — it has a long way to go until it can become an everyday tool. Let's not leave it hanging there. If you continue on this path, you will leave behind a trail of half-baked tools, each one a great concept, but none of them actually useful.
I actually thought that was where this article was going, and was very surprised when it wasn't mentioned.
I will say though (as a lighttable backer with the fancy-schmancy t-shirt to prove it) that the current builds of light table are... incomplete. The idea of lighttable is very exciting, but I haven't really found the current builds to be much use. They are too similar to existing editors / workflows, and as it's beta you're sacrificing stability for not a whole lot of gain.
That is unfair. From what I understand, Chris and company had ambitious goals for lighttable that were not achievable because of the Clojure programming model, so rather than give up, they are taking the next step that they see as necessary.
I've paid for it, but have since switched almost entirely to Emacs(evil mode), Vim and IntelliJ. LightTable intrigued me for a while, but I'd say I'm more interested in the source code (as it's a sizeable ClojureScript application) than using it for active development.
I love the concept of LightTable, basically a new Emacs with a redesigned architecture and plugin system.
I don't love that it's written inside a WebView. I don't love that the best cross-platform graphics library we have is the mess we call HTML+CSS+JS. I don't love that I have to compile Clojure to JavaScript and run it inside a WebView in order to do anything to customize it.
On the other hand, I love the simplicity of the UI of emacs. But I don't love how it's decidedly focused on text-only and its GUI is a second-class citizen. (Try scrolling per-pixel rather than per-line, and consider that tabs can only be implemented as a complete hack based on the ruler area.)
I love that Emacs Lisp compiles to bytecode and is interpreted natively. I love the simplicity of the language and its implementation and how it's integrated with Emacs. But I don't love the language itself.
Light Table is very interesting (I've used it for some Clojure stuff), but it's competing with emacs. It's gonna be very hard to beat emacs. The legacy of thousands of lines of very useful code & unbelievable extensibility is a big one to overcome. I don't mind saying that I foresee emacs getting a lighttable-mode for dynamic languages before Light Table beats emacs. But I usually have a LightTable install on my computers; it's that promising of a project. :-)
+1 to this. I really want to give LightTable a shot. Whenever a new release is announced, I hurriedly download it, open it and then realize that I don't know what to do with it. Eventually I end up uninstalling it and going back to good ol' Vim.
A couple of videos highlighting some cool features for Clojure, Python and Javascript development would be of great help!
The tentative plan is to release a full beta around the turn of the year and have an official launch May of next year. As it stands currently, it will include all the things I've shown in the video for both JavaScript and Clojure, but should we continue to get more funding we can add even more.
A co-worker uses it at work exclusively for editing markdown documents. I find that a little funny.
I had great optimism for LightTable, helped Kickstart it, but was disappointed with ultimately for the very reasons he outlined at the beginning of his talk: it couldn't shift me from emacs. It's not religious for me, but I could try and fail two or three times over in the time it took me to boot lighttable, figure out how to load my code, eval it and begin to debug it.
I enjoyed this presentation though. His Eve does strike me as a sort of proto-semantic web, although I'm warier of pouring my optimism into it this time though.
This is very good to know, and something that I was not at all aware of -- I started using Clojure and thus Light Table after the Kickstarter had ended. For some reason I just assumed Light Table had raised a huge amount, and for that I apologize.
Even though I make a competitor (Cursive) I'm still sad to see LightTable languishing. It had some interesting ideas, even if they never came to fruition.
But the point about the code being incomprehensible is definitely true. I've tried a couple of times to follow a simple flow through the code to see how something worked, and it's difficult-to-impossible. It would be great if the community could pick it up, but this email makes that look very difficult.
Interesting comments about using alternative languages, too. However I suspect that in the same way that ClojureScript wasn't really that much of a benefit compared to the architecture, it probably isn't the main impediment to outside contribution either.
As much as I like vim - it remains software from the stone age and it seems absurd that our main work interface (editor and shell) still consists of an emulated 1980s text-mode terminal.
LightTable looks like a major step in the right direction. I think the best indicator for success will be when the vim/emacs-diehards start porting their respective shortcuts and functionality over.
I could very well see this fundamental approach (modular/dynamically expanding interface) become the new paradigm for editors and (hopefully) terminals if the author manages to make the prototype versatile and hacker-friendly enough.
We've really been entrapped inside ancient TTY-emulations and inadequate GUI-widget sets for way too long.
I have hopes that LightTable will, when finished and released as open source, become the answer for those seeking a modern extensible editor. I love emacs, but there are times when I feel that it's my hair shirt.
Ah, I remember when LightTable launched -- my dad (huge Clojure fan) was over the moon. Even today he's still trying to convince me that I should just use Clojure. :P
I certainly didn't expect the team would be "revisiting some of the foundational ideas of computing" so soon.
LightTable right now is a proof of concept. A very good one, but still — it has a long way to go until it can become an everyday tool. Let's not leave it hanging there. If you continue on this path, you will leave behind a trail of half-baked tools, each one a great concept, but none of them actually useful.
reply