Light Table - An IDE Concept

Link. It's kind of a debugger canvas + code search.

-Josh

Saw this yesterday … awesome stuff.

I like all the instantaneous results stuff, but a lot of it, to me, seems like an overly complex way of saying "it's visual studio with a lot of chromeless windows". It appears to me that everything in the "Docs everywhere" section is describing what Intellisense already does. The drafting tables thing is cool, but how is this not a lot of chromeless windows arranged next to each other? "why can't we embed a running game on our work surface? Then we can interrogate it, ask it questions and have our environment answer them for us." Why can't we? What have I been doing with debug mode, immediate window, quickview etc. for all these years then?

Granted, I've only read that first page, maybe I'm missing something awesome, but it doesn't seem to me like the completely new way of working they're making it out to be.

@Bas: Did you watch the video?

I don't think I've seen any IDE that runs code while you're typing it. 

Impressive stuff, though I don't think we'll see it up and running for a few years yet.

Like I said, I only read the first page. I'll watch the video later today.

Bass, i believe it's an interpreted language, that's why you can do this

It doesn't actually look all that much more than what can be done with Intellisense and Edit-and-Continue really. The language choice is curious too, I'm not sure some of the concepts would really extend quite so well to an OO language. And I suspect much of the other stuff could actually be acheived in VS2010 given it's ability to customize presentation using WPF.

Nice idea but not quite as revolutionary as the video suggests.

@AndyC: except that edit-and-continue is extremely limited. No 64 bit, no lambdas, no xaml. etc.

Light Table got so much interest that they've applied to Kickstarter  ... http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/15/light-tables-numbers/.

@Bas, @AndyC Part of the interest is the ability to move and organize things on a "drafting table" into logical groups that is free from the restrictions of folder/file structure.  The instanteous feedback with sample data showing realtime results is like edit-and-continue, as non-edit-and-continue is to edit-and-continue.  Also, edit and continue with graphics?  Since this is based on (EDIT - name and link) Bret Victor's presentation, things like displaying change over time are also likely to be added as well.  If you haven't seen that in action yet, I think you'll be impressed.

Wow, this would be a fantastic add-on to VS. The debugging-as-you-type wouldn't really work with a compiled language, but even the related function view and the dynamic documentation would be great time savers.

Intellisense already provides the info, but it's not shown all of the time (unless there's some "intellisense window" that I'm missing). Same with "Find All References". It would be cool to just have that stuff there. I also like the chromeless design. Maybe we'll see things like this in Metro VS2014.

@DeathByVisualStudio:I think someday the VS folks will get "edit and continue" on x64 done. Afterall, when most people already move on to x64 OSs, just able to do "edit and continue" on 32-bit code would have limited use.

Btw, I wonder if the IDE can cover imported components or even COM libraries as well.

42 minutes ago, cheong wrote

when most people already move on to x64 OSs, just able to do "edit and continue" on 32-bit code would have limited use.

You can run 32-bit apps (and even edit-and-continue those 32-bit apps) on a x64 OS.

If you move away from a file-based paradigm for storing code, you'll have to put all your code into a single binary file that's encoded to separate the different "code snippets". This is exactly how Microsoft Visual FoxPro stored form designs and class definitions. You could open up code snippets for multiple event handlers in separate windows and arrange them in your IDE however you wanted. In addition, VFP came with a "Command Window" which essentially served as a REPL. You could type almost any code into it--even instantiate objects and move a "record pointer" in a database table. If you liked the results, you could copy that code from the Command Window and paste it into the code snippet window of your form or class design.

IOW, lot of this is what Microsoft had since 1992 (and subsequently killed off in 2007), although it wasn't nearly as pretty as Light Table.

10 hours ago, evildictaitor wrote

*snip*

You can run 32-bit apps (and even edit-and-continue those 32-bit apps) on a x64 OS.

Been down that alley. Still get beat-up by lamdas and xaml.

22 hours ago, evildictaitor wrote

You can run 32-bit apps (and even edit-and-continue those 32-bit apps) on a x64 OS.

You can, however I don't prefer it. And for web developers, Windows Server 8 will not have 32-bit subsystem on default installation. Although it can be installed as a feature later, I'd avoid it if possible. (Partly because it'd mean existing 32-bit targeted malwares won't be able to run on those servers)

Light Table got so much interest that they've applied to Kickstarter

Oh that Kickstarter, what will they think of next!

Light Table is on Kickstarter now. ...

51 minutes ago, Richard.Hein wrote

Light Table is on Kickstarter now. ...

He never really mentions that it's a Google Summer of Code project.

http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Google+Summer+of+Code+2012#GoogleSummerofCode2012-Browser-basedClojureScripteditor

Browser-based Clojure(Script) editor

Brief explanation: Taking the editor out of my live game editor for ClojureScript, we could create a more general purpose code editor for use with Clojure/ClojureScript. Emacs, VIM, and CCW certainly work wonderfully for editing clojure, but their UI paradigms don't allow for more complex interactions. With the recent creation of code analysis tools, we can start to add much more interesting visual signals that can help you write better code. For examples of what can be done in this space, take a look a Dr. Racket.

Expected results: A fully capable editor that can save, read, compile files from a browser interface. Also, the beginnings of work on in-place UI to help with coding, e.g. visualizing the call stack when an exception occurs.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Clojure, creativity, a love for code, some understanding of code analysis would probably be useful

Skill level: medium to insane

Mentor: Chris Granger (San Francisco, CA)

The clojure community & Google are making the big $100/$1000 contributions.