Light Table funding successful, including Python support (over $300k raised)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table?ref=email

by sthlm • 14 years ago

137 64 14 years ago

kickstarter.com

voxx2• 14 years ago

I can't believe they (devs) chose python over ruby or java or scala or ANYTHING but python.

theootz2• 14 years ago

And what's wrong with Python?

sgrove• 14 years ago

Python's a great fit, certainly a more straight-forward one than java/scala. Presumably python/ruby would be equally interesting additions to Light Table

peterhajas• 14 years ago

I'm guessing the commenter has a thing against Python for some reason.

david_shaw• 14 years ago

They actually opened it up to additional funding specifically to include Python. That money was raised based on community support (including financial support), so now they're including it.

Why are you so surprised that there'd be support/choices for Python?

achompas• 14 years ago

Fortunately Light Table will have support for packaging, so users can add any language they want.

Tuna-Fish• 14 years ago

Scala and Java are reasonably well served by traditional IDEs. Dynamic languages (such as ruby and python) are not, and based on the presentations, that's the market he is trying to serve. As for the choice between Ruby and Python, they are sufficiently similar that most of the work done to make one work will help with the other, and the choice mostly is which one he wants to support first. Python has a bigger community.

mark_l_watson• 14 years ago

I mostly agree with you: Using IntelliJ (Java) and Rubymine (Ruby) is a great experience, however PyCharm (Python) provides the same nice dev experience.

All that said, I contributed fairly early on, and I wish that they would concentrate on just Clojure. The reason for my preference is that the LT devs are going to be exploring new ways to code and experimenting with just one language seems sufficient.

melling2• 14 years ago

More people program in Python so they have a larger market to target than Ruby or Scala. If you're trying to start a business that's probably the best way to choose. I would guess that Ruby would soon follow.

dwc• 14 years ago

I think it would be nice if the linked kickstarter page (which has many "why this" and "what about that" answers) explained why they chose Python. I'm pretty baffled. Just because it's popular? Better to pick C# then. Because it's... er, I can't even think of another reason.

sigwhite• 14 years ago

Let's consider the "obvious" choices by examing the TIOBE top 10:

1. C - Not really the target audience of a tool like this.

2. Java - See above, plus plenty of competition.

3. C++ - See C.

4. Objective-C - See C, also arguably a bit of a niche (iOS).

5. C# - See Java, VirtualStudio dominates.

6. PHP - Yeah, right.

7. (Visual) Basic - Who are you kidding?

8. Python - Oh, right.

9. Perl - Only ranks high because of sys admins.

10. JavaScript - Already covered.

11. Ruby - Like Python, see below.

Basically your question seems to boil down to either of these:

1. Why was Python picked over Java/C#?

2. Why was Python picked over Ruby?

As for #1: the answer should seem obvious if you consider the category the three languages (JS, Clojure and Python) share. Plus, the market is very different and the competition is very strong and established.

As for Ruby: It's probably personal preference. There really isn't any objective reason to pick Python over Ruby or vice versa. The two are more similar than either of them would like to admit and they are perfectly interchangeable in most situations.

onedev2• 14 years ago

Because Python is great. I love it and I'm glad it's being supported. Thanks for your snide remark though.

voxx2• 14 years ago

you're welcome, scrub.

ibdknox• 14 years ago

Thanks to everyone:

http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/06/01/45-days-later/

guelo• 14 years ago

Congrats on the funding! I'm sure you have excellent advisers and business plans at this point but I'm still going to be presumptuous and offer my advice: you need to be really frugal. $300k is not huge runway and before you know it will be gone. You need to keep any and all overhead low and plow as much as possible into development. Your project is ambitious and expectations are high, you need leeway for false starts, do-overs, pivots, impatient users, fickle press, etc.

I'm really hoping along with 7,316 other people that you can pull it off. Good luck!

onedev2• 14 years ago

Please listen to this guy.

moe2• 14 years ago

$300k is not huge runway

I like lighttable (and donated, too), but this is getting ridiculous.

$300k is one hell of a runway. Neither Vim nor Emacs had any kind of runway. Hardly any bootstrapped startup has that kind of money lying around.

The onus is now on him to deliver something worthwhile. $300k can comfortably carry an individual for 4+ years, no frugality needed at all. I sure hope we'll see results sooner than that.

chadv• 14 years ago

Congrats, Chris. Can't wait for the feedback rounds.

fernandezpablo2• 14 years ago

They say:

"Ultimately the goal of the platform is to be a highly extensible work surface"

Still they needed 100k for adding Python support?

I guess ruby/scala support is not happening anytime soon.

sthlm• 14 years ago

I thought the whole budget was rather low compared to the total value that is to be created.

Sure, 100k for 1 language sounds odd, given that 200k was enough not only for 2 languages, but also the entire framework. Still, the overall price point is more than fair.

You have to take into consideration that Light Table aims to be specific; adding further languages will likely result in more efforts than merely adjusting an IDE a little bit.

fernandezpablo2• 14 years ago

I'm not saying 300k is a lot of money for LightTable. Sure, it sounds fair.

I'm just saying they claim to be "highly extensible" and yet, support for a new language requires a development effort of 100k.

It's sad since I mostly code in ruby or scala, these languages won't be supported and I don't think anyone is going to make a 100k development effort to support them.

mwhooker• 14 years ago

it's not as if we were purchasing one language. It's a stretch goal, with python as the reward. The goal and the difficulty of implementation are not related.

duaneb2• 14 years ago

Of course, the more popular language, the higher the value. $200k for a clojure IDE is certainly overvalued for the number of people using it, but $300k is way undervalued for python. Not sure about javascript; obviously it's popular, but it's unclear whether this ide supports anything but niche (non-browser) use.

melling2• 14 years ago

What does it cost to add another developer to the budget? At least $100k?

pacaro• 14 years ago

Some (many?) tech companies allow $200 - $250 per engineer per year - obviously this includes all of the other costs of employment in addition to direct compensation, at which point $300 doesn't look like so very much.

scottjad• 14 years ago

I think you're thinking about this wrong. Python support appears to be an incentive/carrot to help raise more money in general, not just for that feature. So Chris probably thought "it would be nice if we could raise even more money" for all sorts of features and picked one of them (built-in Python support) to use as an incentive.

ezer• 14 years ago

Python was a great choice as an incentive for raising more money, considering the size of the community.

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

Glad I got in when a license was $15. If there's one feature I'd like in the future, it's extensibility. Let dev communities write their own plugins for languages, so it doesn't all fall on Granger's lap.

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

It's not just desirable; it's absolutely required. Look at every successful dev environment and you'll see a large community of developers making it better. Those that survive in spite of this (eg Xcode) do so because something else forces their continued existence (such as being the only way onto the iPhone).

bryze• 14 years ago

I have my own ideas about how to do this, and I'm glad someone is moving in this direction, but I must ask, is this a stepping stone in a grander vision? Enemies of software development today are:

1. Code Comprehension: Can new people quickly understand a complex code base enough to implement significant features. 2. Fault Diagnosis: When is the last time you spent less than 50% of a project's time on debugging? 3. Code Transformation: Have you ever actually tried to factor a mega-function into separate functions? How about creating a set of concrete classes when you realize that your hierarchy abstraction breaks down under new requirements. Now do all that without introducing new bugs.

These are the hard problems, and it excites me that people are thinking about how to solve them. This tool will not solve all those problems, and maybe one tool shouldn't, but nevertheless I hope people will start thinking about the entire development process and how to improve all the tools of our industry.

cageface• 14 years ago

Java + a good modern IDE like IntelliJ are far from the last word on all these questions, of course, but they're much better than you might guess if you have't worked in that world for a while. I was astonished at how powerful the combination of a simple, statically typed language and a good IDE can be. You can almost completely stop thinking of code as a bunch of text and start thinking about it as an organically evolving structure.

The tooling around dynamic languages is almost laughably primitive and limited in comparison.

theootz2• 14 years ago

I always loved the amount of power in java IDEs (Eclipse, for me) for refactoring code...made things so much easier.

gnaritas• 14 years ago

> The tooling around dynamic languages is almost laughably primitive and limited in comparison.

Around most dynamic languages, there are exceptions like Smalltalk which has excellent tooling including the automated refactoring and the best development environment around. Let's not forget, tools such as automated refactoring and xUnit type test tools originated in Smalltalk.

irahul4• 14 years ago

> The tooling around dynamic languages is almost laughably primitive and limited in comparison.

Somethings just can't be done.

    class Foo:
        def foo():
            pass

    def bar(f):
        f.foo

If you re-factor Foo.foo to Foo.renamed, there is no way to know if the call in bar should be re-named as well.

facorreia• 14 years ago

I have the same feeling working with C# and Visual Studio with ReSharper. It's impressive how easily I can navigate the code base, refactor with confidence and learn APIs as I go.

twelvechairs2• 14 years ago

I'm with you on the 'I'm glad someone is moving in this direction' vein, but to me the "Enemies of software development today" are much broader than you suggest. I am pretty strongly of the view that the fundamental line between 'developer' and 'user' (aka. 'programming' and 'program') needs to be broken down.

mwsherman• 14 years ago

This sounds nice in theory but I don’t think it’s an interesting goal. I’ll go further: it’s been the goal all along but doesn’t have traction.

SQL was designed as a “business” language, for end users (what we now call information workers). Didn’t happen. There have been many promises of “visual” languages, just drag and drop components and you have an app.

The issue is not tools, but the fact that programming is a logical business. The best programmers are logicians – they have a robust mental model of a problem to be solved. The coding (and the tools) help, but they ain’t the thing.

Basically, being capable of manipulating Illustrator does not an artist make.

In fact, programming has been moving in the other direction: more people I know use Ruby on a command line than Visual Studio’s design surfaces.

The frontier is in end-user UI. Progress is when we allow users to be more ambiguous, less logical, and still give them what they want.

vineet• 14 years ago

I completely agree with the above. I spent my PhD building prototypes and tools for the above. Check out what we have done at: http://www.architexa.com.

Would love to hear your thoughts (see my profile for my email address). And feel free to get in touch for a free license of our software.

soapdog• 14 years ago

I am a backer and I just want to say that I am anxious to see it running... =)

DivisibleByZero• 14 years ago

It's really exciting to see a great development tool. While I love vim and will passionately fight for it's place as the best 'text editor'. I readily recognize it's faults as a development environment.

All the other tools I've seen up to this point seem to be a text editor with plugins or additional components stacked on top. Even IDEs seem to follow this pattern and are development tools built on a text editor.

It is nice to see a holistic approach to designing development environment from the ground up. To me light table looks to be the first real development environment as opposed to an improvement.

nivertech• 14 years ago

So the total funding will be something like:

$484K =~ $316K from KS + $18K from YC + $150K from Start Fund?

dkersten• 14 years ago

-KS's cut

JackC• 14 years ago

- Amazon's cut - prize fulfillment costs

At smaller scales, there can be a huge difference between sticker price and what you actually have to work with:

http://kotaku.com/5902280/what-the-hell-these-game-developer...

Light Table funding successful, including Python support (over $300k raised)

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