A new Light Table experience

http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/02/27/light-table-030-experience/

by falava • 13 years ago

374 143 13 years ago

chris-granger.com

Raphael_Amiard• 13 years ago

It is absolutely gorgeous, but it is also looking a lot more like a traditional text editor from what i can gather.

I'll download and play with it a bit anyway, to see what i get from it.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

It is, but that's because we have to have a solid editing experience for the "simple" stuff before we can do the more interesting things. What good is it to have these awesome function oriented editors when you can't even modify a file efficiently? :)

We use tabs as a simple way of wrapping up a context. In the future they will include all sorts of neat things - and they aren't limited in any way. If we want, we can drop an infinite canvas into one, or a codex (a document made of many parts of different files). So yes, right now we wanted something beautiful and efficient to use while live coding, but as I said in my bit about 0.4.0, the really interesting semantic-oriented stuff (functions and the like) is what's next!

mej10• 13 years ago

Has anyone started work on an Emacs Lisp to ClojureScript compiler? :)

Speaking of which, are Emacs keybindings coming any time soon?

jasonjackson• 13 years ago

I for one am glad you're nailing the editor part first. Because if this is ever to replace my usage of emacs, you have to at least get that part right. This hasn't yet replaced my emacs, but i'm more optimistic now. Some editing features missing are paredit, viewing source code of a clojure core function. (Alt-. in emacs.) When you eval something and it never terminates, you need a way to kill that thread. For IDE like features, #1 on my list is refactoring clojure code quickly, e.g. renaming symbols. As someone who's anal about prioritizing time, I don't ever customize the themes, etc, I just want killer useful features that save me time and "just work".

deangiberson• 13 years ago

+1 for strong editing features. All the fancy stuff came after Emacs became an OS for editing text. Nail that, the rest follows.

fdb3• 13 years ago

There's something weird going on when using the trackpad on OS X. My trackpad is set to "natural scrolling", but if I scroll really fast the editor seems to scroll in the other direction.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

I think that might be a bug in CodeMirror[1], does it happen consistently? I'll see what I can track down.

[1] http://codemirror.net/

fdb3• 13 years ago

Changing the trackpad direction doesn't have any effect, still the same issue.

amckenna• 13 years ago

I know python support is planned, but will it be integrated alpha/beta or will we have to wait until after the 1.0 release?

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

It'll definitely be before 1.0, but I'm not exactly sure when. Right now it's still just me on the code side, so it depends a bit on how hiring goes.

learningram• 13 years ago

How many people are working on this project ?

dpick2• 13 years ago

Stack Size Exceeded when trying to open a ~3500 line clojure app :(.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

a ~3500 line file? What do you mean by open? Could you put up an issue [1] with a bit more information so we can track it down?

[1] https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-Playground/issues

dpick2• 13 years ago

It's a project with a bunch of files, totals around 3500 lines. I'll post an issue.

shuma• 13 years ago

Which languages does it support?

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

It's a general editor and can open most things out there, however the eval stuff is limited to Clojure, ClojureScript, JavaScript, and CSS.

pnathan• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity - I haven't followed this project in technical detail - are you using SWANK or your own backend work?

I would be interested in experimenting with it for Common Lisp, you see. :)

Avestan• 13 years ago

I follow LT project since I saw it on kickstarter and it looks great so far. And I cannot wait for promised full Python support to be implemented.

pixelbath2• 13 years ago

This is a very pretty editor. That said, I have no freaking idea what I'm supposed to do. I've been messing around with it for around 15 minutes now, and I still don't understand it.

I added a PHP website folder and got no code hinting or anything else beyond "here is the match for your parenthesis" for either PHP or Javascript. This also resulted in my "navigate" tab being filled with SVN meta-files. I am quite confused.

Looking around on the site and some of the comments here, it appears you're using Clojure. Does this IDE only support Clojure?

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

Think of LT as something more akin to an editor in spirit - you won't see watch windows and all the craziness you often see in "big" IDE's. In that regard, you use it like you use any editor. If you're working with Clojure, ClojureScript, or Javascript code, however, you can evaluate a block inline by pressing Cmd-Enter (or Ctrl-Enter).

Now that we have an experience we plan to stick with more documentation and getting started content will be coming in the next few days. :)

EDIT: I didn't think about SVN, we do filter out Git, but this should just be customizable. Added an issue for it [1].

[1] https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-Playground/issues/266

antihero• 13 years ago

.pyc files also seem to be showing up.

I've opened a python file, typed 1 + 1 and hit Ctrl+Enter and it doesn't seem to do anything.

shurcooL2• 13 years ago

Chris, are you planning to submit a demo for LIVE 2013?

sciurus• 13 years ago

You may find the Kickstarter page informative-

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/306316578/light-table

"What languages will it support?

The first two languages it will support are Javascript and Clojure, but the application will be written in such a way that adding new languages can happen through plugins."

pixelbath2• 13 years ago

Ah, thank you very much for the context. I guess I've been a bit out of the HN loop.

baby2• 13 years ago

well too bad it only supports those two. If I get in Clojure/Javascript before it supports others like Python or PHP I'll try it.

xauronx• 13 years ago

Same here. I really WANT to use this, but I added a PHP project and it doesn't seem to do anything. I can't even Ctrl+F to find something in the file. I'm looking everywhere for hotkeys to do things, but there's no documentation I can find. I was expecting some kind of awesome interface like "Ctrl-Left Arrow" to bring up the left bar, then type in your command and press enter and it does magic and hides the bar. But I guess at this point I'd take a find hot key.

To the creator: I love the idea and got enthusiastic after watching the video. Keep up with the hard work! This is a huge undertaking.

Edit* OK, so Ctrl+Space enters the command window. From there you can type "Key" and press enter to view the key bindings. I'm not sure why I had to go three layers deep into a google groups conversation to get that though.

Davertron• 13 years ago

I was wondering the same thing. Neither ctrl+space or cmd+space works on osx for me, maybe because I have alfred installed?

moogleii• 13 years ago

The website definitely could use a little more info. I had never heard of lighttable until now. Figuring out what it was and what problems it was solving took longer than it should have, imo. I don't want to watch a video. Give me a breakdown, time is precious!

Kurtz79• 13 years ago

I haven't tried this version yet, but I had the same experience with the previous release.

Why not spending a bit of time releasing a simple tutorial, showcasing the differences with normal editors ?

Right now it's really too "metaphysic".

malandrew• 13 years ago

This is exactly my experience as well. It's not obvious how to get started with it and there is no tutorial that I found explaining how I would go about using it.

At the very least you should record screencasts of you using LT to build LT with you talking people through what you are doing.

I really want to give this a shot, but it needs to be easy to get started.

Besides your feature and bug backlog, I would map out the user journey (i.e. create an experience map) for LT to discover all the pain and frustration points people may have with using LT.

octix• 13 years ago

Has anyone started using LT? Is it productive? Should java devs even bother with this? Thank you.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

It's not going to be more useful to a Java developer than Eclipse is currently, but that's because we're going after a very different end goal. FWIW, all our work is done in LT and it is far more efficient than I used to be with Vim.

josh-j• 13 years ago

Is there a screencast where I can see you being more efficient in LT than Vim?

kybernetyk• 13 years ago

I (clojure hobbyist) play around with it regularly but IMHO it's not really ready for prime time yet.

arrakeen• 13 years ago

any reason in particular that this doesn't support osx10.6?

companyhen• 13 years ago

I'm a web designer (PSD -> WordPress) and I started learning programming around the time Light Table was funded on KickStarter. It's been nice to see the project grow with my programming skills. Although I still don't feel like a decent programmer, it's nice to see what my small $15 investment has helped create. :)

podperson2• 13 years ago

What going back over the old demo and looking at this post did was remind me of how nice jsfiddle is when it isn't insanely slow, which then led me to wonder how hard it would be to create something like jsfiddle that lived on top of github would be, or something like jsfiddle that lived inside my favorite editor, or just in a static html page on my desktop.

eric_bullington• 13 years ago

If you get frustrated with jsfiddle, try out http://cssdeck.com/labs It's nominally oriented toward CSS and all the CSS preprocessors, but it handles JS just fine (and CoffeeScript, too!). I like its layout a lot more than jsfiddle -- it's more aesthetically appealing to me. It also features the ability to do codecasts. I can't recall if jsfiddle has that, but it's a nice feature for demonstrating code to someone.

podperson2• 13 years ago

Looks good (loads fast) and I like the coffeescript support.

WickyNilliams• 13 years ago

I used to be a huge proponent of JSFiddle but it's got so slow and temperamental recently that I've started moving over to codepen.io. It gives instant results (every change is evaluated in real time), supports LESS and SASS on the CSS side, and CoffeeScript on the scripting side. And it's got a nicer UI, giving more space to the output pane and allowing quick switching/expanding of the code panes

karlokeeffe2• 13 years ago

I get the error:

"LightTable.app" is damaged and can't be opened.

I'm running OSX 10.8.2.

Anyone else having the same problem?

Are there any dependancies I need to have installed before running the app?

elomarns• 13 years ago

I'm getting the same error.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

This is OSX's gatekeeper going crazy because our codesign included the icns file (which then got compressed and no longer verifies). I'm uploading a new package right now. As a workaround you can go to security in system settings, set it to allow anything to run, open LightTable.app, close it and then re-enable the old gatekeeper setting. LT will open fine thereafter. Or you can just redownload in about 2 minutes.

karlokeeffe2• 13 years ago

Great, that's fixed it for me.

arikrak• 13 years ago

i get this when i visit the mac download link:

<Error> <Code>AccessDenied</Code> <Message>Access Denied</Message> ...

Update: OK, it works now.

eaxbin2• 13 years ago

I'm getting Access Denied when trying to download the OS X version. Other versions are working fine.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

fixed, sorry about that.

eaxbin2• 13 years ago

Cool, thanks.

ollysb• 13 years ago

I'd absolutely love to see ruby in Light Table, how are plans looking for this? If there was a kickstarter for adding ruby I'd pony up in a flash. I realise manpower is probably going to be the main issue though...

lrem• 13 years ago

Python is first. It was already paid for in the kickstarter...

relic• 13 years ago

Back of the line Ruby!

ibdthor• 13 years ago

Manpower is an issue, but we've gotten a lot of requests for Ruby in the future. When and where Ruby support will come is still unknown, but do know that we hear you! :)

pmr_• 13 years ago

I think this would be the right place to bring this up: Is language support backed in or can everyone write a plug-in for his language? Implementing highlighting, completion and repl for all the different languages users could want seems like an enormous task. At the same time this is where Emacs shines: supporting a new language rudimentary is easy to do, adding more advanced support isn't too hard either. Will users be able to define new language modes?

andreyf• 13 years ago

Noooo! So many wasted pixels at the top! Why!? It was so much better before!

Aside from that: neat! :)

manaskarekar3• 13 years ago

Toggle Fullscreen should fix that.

Meai• 13 years ago

You should add mousewheel scrolling of tabs, I'd like that. Also a white theme, because black themes look sort of sketchy at work.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

in the command bar, type "skin" and press enter. You can change it to a light skin. :) You can also change the editor theme, by using the "change editor theme" command.

lucian1900• 13 years ago

> black themes look sort of sketchy at work

Could you explain that?

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

I'm curious as well, since most of the programmers I've met prefers a dark theme. :)

manaskarekar3• 13 years ago

Apart from the other obvious praises, I just want to thank you for making something so beautiful with Clojure as a first class citizen.

huhsamovar• 13 years ago

I have completely the opposite opinion. Clojure is not as widely used as some other languages. Python springs to mind; I know it was part of the Kickstarter pledge.

Support for compiled languages would be nice, although I realise this is difficult.

manaskarekar3• 13 years ago

That is exactly why this makes me so happy. :) There are already tons of good tools for Python.

miloshadzic• 13 years ago

There's already an awesome editor that has Python as a first class citizen, Sublime Text 2.

auggierose• 13 years ago

Does anyone know what Light Table is programmed in? It seems to be cross platform, how does it achieve that? I assume some kind of mix between Clojure and using browser technology as a UI, but does anyone know specifics?

swannodette• 13 years ago

node-webkit - http://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

Check out my previous post: http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/01/24/the-ide-as-data/

joshuacc• 13 years ago

In addition to node-webkit, I believe the app code itself is written in ClojureScript (a compile-to-js dialect of Clojure.)

fstephany• 13 years ago

Yep, mostly ClojureScript and a bit of Javascript for boot and setup.

paulhodge• 13 years ago

I love these updates, the tool is looking more awesome every day.

I'm wondering if there's a roadmap for Light Table's release, specifically if there's a point where the code will be available? I have a programming language in progress and I'm interested in potentially hacking LT to support the language. It seems like it would be a good fit.

scottjad2• 13 years ago

How are you highlighting the matching characters in the fuzzy search results?

http://www.chris-granger.com/images/030/navigate.png

It looks like the same method I'm using in emacs/ido, which is to turn "la/clj" into

  "(l).*?(a).*?(/).*?(c).*?(l).*?(j).*?"

I've found this technique gives inferior results to whatever SublimeText is doing. For example, in your hits with "langs", such as "lt/objs/langs/js.cljs" I think "lt/objs/langs/js.cljs" is more intuitive than the result you give of "lt/objs/langs/js.cljs". (Sorry for the hard to read italics)

For another example, on a search of "completions" I think your technique will highlight "hacks-completions" as "hacks-completions" instead of "hacks-completions".

Does anyone know if there's an easy way to modify the regex (not LightTable) and get the user-friendly results of Sublime Text?

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

it's not currently configurable, but I agree that the highlighting should be more like that. Filed an issue to track it: https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-Playground/issues/277

jules• 13 years ago

Turn slashes into

    .*?(/).*?

and leave the rest alone?

If you don't want to treat slashes specially and want to allow "ab" to match "aqqqb" then I don't think you can do it without creating a giant regex. You can go for a modified longest common subsequence algorithm.

Edit: here's how you can do it:

    // gives one point for each letter matched
    // plus an extra point if the next letter is also a match
    let rec scorematch = function
        | true::true::r -> 2 + scorematch (true::r)
        | true::r -> 1 + scorematch r
        | false::r -> scorematch r
        | [] -> 0

    // find the match with best score
    let rec search xs ys =
        match (xs,ys) with
        | (x::xr, y::yr) -> 
            let matches = [false::search xr ys; false::search xs yr]
            let matches = if x=y then (true::search xr yr)::matches else matches
            matches |> List.maxBy scorematch
        | _,ys -> List.map (fun _ -> false) ys

    let underline xs ys = search (List.ofSeq xs) (List.ofSeq ys) 
                          |> List.map (fun b -> if b then "-" else " ") 
                          |> String.Concat

    for x in ["foobarbaz"; "foobaXrbaz"; "foobXaXrbaz"; "foobXaXrbazr"] do
        Console.WriteLine x
        Console.WriteLine (underline "bar" x)

For search term "bar" this outputs:

    foobarbaz
       ---   

    foobaXrbaz
       -- -   

    foobXaXrbaz
       - - -   

    foobXaXrbazr
            -- -

You'll want to memoize this or apply dynamic programming.

scottjad2• 13 years ago

Thank you!

martinced2• 13 years ago

"I've found this technique gives inferior results to whatever SublimeText is doing."

Oh boy this one we're going to hear for a long time ain't we!?

abecedarius• 13 years ago

So how do you see these inline results? I'm told cmd-enter or cmd-shift-enter will evaluate code; on Windows 7, for me, none of ctrl-enter, alt-enter, or windows-enter seem to do anything. ctrl-shift-enter in a .js file creates a checkmark next to my first line, 2+3; (though not the lines I'd written after it). Trying to create a .clj or .cljs file, by 'Create a new file' and then 'Save file', it remains as 'untitled', and ctrl-shift-enter doesn't seem to do anything.

Anyone else on Windows at the moment with tips?

(The 'bindings' command lists things like Cmd Enter; since it lists Ctrl for other keybindings, I'm guessing that's meant to mean Alt.)

alepper• 13 years ago

Looks like Ctrl+Enter and Ctrl+Shift+Enter start to work after saving the file with a recognised extension. You'll have to use the mouse, as pressing Enter cancels, despite the 'Save' button being highlighted as if it were the default.

Unfortunately, even just (defn id [x] x) gets me "java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to resolve symbol: defn".

DigitalJack• 13 years ago

Take a look here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5300653

Macsenour• 13 years ago

As a game dev guy, I'm looking at the two new Open game platforms, Ouya and GameStick, and thinking that LT might be a great way to get kids into coding.

Getting kids to code games is so much easier than any other project, even if the game is extremely simple.

Anyone care to comment?

shawndumas• 13 years ago

Have you messed around with ImpactJS? I'd love to see some LT and ImpactJS lov'n.

cheald• 13 years ago

I've tried to add a workspace directory from a Samba mount, and it's been stuck for about 10 minutes now.

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

I downloaded Linux 64 and it doesn't work in Debian. No readme either?

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

Just tried Linux32 download and it seems to be working :-)

edoloughlin• 13 years ago

Currently downloading at 9-10KB/s. Anyone seeding a torrent?

zenbowman• 13 years ago

Beautiful stuff

almost_usual• 13 years ago

Awesome, really nice to have such great Clojure support

ttty3• 13 years ago

how to open those cells like they do in the video?

sudowork2• 13 years ago

Small bug I found: When I change the editor theme to something other than `default`, the next time I start up the editor, the theme isn't loaded. Instead, I just get some light grey text on a dark grey background.

UX Annoyance: When clicking on an exception, there's no visual indication that it's been clicked on. I found that Shift+Tabbing brings you back to the editor pane (other than using the mouse).

A couple more things that could just be me being stupid. When I try to eval using Ctrl+Shift+Enter, nothing happens. Instead, I have to eval each line one-by-one. I tried creating a new key binding, but couldn't figure out how to delimit my keys to allow modifiers. I also can't figure out how to pop up documentation or data flow as demo'd in the original light table (this is my first time using any version of light table). I tried `(doc <foo>)`, but it just evaluates to `nil`.

Anyways, hope these comments might be useful in terms of my user experience as a first time user.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

Created an issue for the first [1]

Not sure about the ctrl+shift+enter not working, I'll see if I can come up with a repro. Keys are delimited with -, so Ctrl-Shift-Enter

For (doc ..) take a look at the bottom console, click the little arrow which should be blue when there's new content in there. All prints go to that console.

Thanks for the report! :)

[1] https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-Playground/issues/281

sudowork2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the fast response! I'm really hopeful for the future of Light Table, and I appreciate the work you've put it.

ttty3• 13 years ago

the little arrow is white on a grey button. If I click it opens up something grey that it's empty. I cannot write or anything it's just a grey box.. :s

ttty3• 13 years ago

me too. win 7 64bit

billyvg2• 13 years ago

How do I go into vim mode?

billyvg2• 13 years ago

Nevermind, there's a "Toggle vim mode" command

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

Would be nice if font size changed by control+scrolling mouse wheel, most code editors do that. I can't imagine really needing (or wanting) to evaluate things in realtime (like the videos demonstrate) unless I was writing cryptic, mind-numbing algorithms all day every day. I like the idea in one of your videos, every function can have its own little window, but I wouldn't want that to create new files for me automatically in the background and it would have to be more useful than a straightforward "split window" editor function, which is already something I rarely use. The colors are cool but not as cool as my hacked Crunchbang+Geany colors. Maybe one day Light Table will be like a more graphical, user-friendly Emacs? I don't know. The videos are really eye-catching but realistically I can't imagine why I'd use Light Table. I realize there's already a lot of interest in this, but I would like to see more videos showing how this is actually more useful than Gedit or whatever.

DigitalTurk2• 13 years ago

It just so happens that I started playing with Clojure yesterday! I didn't quite manage to get anything to work in LT, however.

E.g. if I do Cmd+Enter on a definition, I get this:

  clojure.lang.Compiler$CompilerException: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to
  resolve symbol: defn in this context, compiling:…

If I click 'Make current editor and instarepl' I get errors like this:

  clojure.lang.Compiler$CompilerException: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to
  resolve symbol: subs in this context, compiling:(NO_SOURCE_PATH:9)

It's all rather confusing. Maybe there's a manual somewhere I should read, but I couldn't find it.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

All files in Clojure require a namespace form at the top:

   (ns foo.bar)

Since you don't have one, clojure.core isn't available and it freaks out. I'll look into setting the default namespace of file so that it's a little nicer for newcomers :)

DigitalTurk2• 13 years ago

oh. Thanks.

It's not a problem when using 'clj' from the command line.

Here are some other issues I ran into (FWIW):

- println works, but print doesn't. - I was expecting cmd+A and then cmd+enter to evaluate everything. - Why are there (seemingly) no shortcuts for the command bar? - Activating 'Make current editor and instarepl' twice in a row, clears all the text in the editor… that's weird - The text cursor got confused at some point

But I guess it's an alpha version. :)

baby2• 13 years ago

More than 300k raised? Isn't that way too much? How much is a developer getting paid in the valley?

btipling• 13 years ago

You gotta be kidding on the sideways text as an important part of the UI. Also adding the vim integration is a waste of time as long as you don't have buffers, registers, ranges and can't parse my .vimrc nor use my modules you might as well not do it.

ghallo• 13 years ago

>You gotta be kidding on the sideways text as an important part of the UI.

Agreed. I closed the tab as soon as I saw that.

benaiah• 13 years ago

> You gotta be kidding on the sideways text as an important part of the UI.

I don't think he ever actually says it is. Also, "... if your preference is for something else, you have complete freedom when writing your own skin."

jhchabran• 13 years ago

Well parsing the vimrc might be too much as it would require a full compatibility layer and I highly doubt it'll ever happen. Using vanilla lighttable config wouldn't bother me, even if I have to rewrite most of it. It's a different editor after all.

But yeah, all the "vim" layers around are basically just the bindings, in normal and insert mode which just half of vim. If we can't change buffers with :b, :A or anything, it's just painful as a vim user. Same goes for what you listed.

I have great respect for the guys at code mirror, it's just that I view it as just a quick hack to add vim bindings that a real vim like solution. If LightTable advertises about being vim friendly, there should be an implementation that keeps the vim workflow, not just small bindings.

As a vim user, I'll just skip the "vim" mode if it's done like that (and sadly I'll stick to Vim even if I really crave for a modern "vim" with a decent scripting language).

Is there any plan to address that in the future ?

marizmelo• 13 years ago

Small drag and drop problem.... On OSX I can drag the divisor for files/texteditor OVER the option of tabs (left options)... if I drop the editor there I cannot resize the view anymore and have to restart the program.

glesperance• 13 years ago

What is the project direction in relation to complex JS apps?

i.e.: How do you guys expect the instarepl idea to be used in apps made of serveral node.js modules/libs or several files meant to be loaded together via RequireJS ?

bbq• 13 years ago

This looks great! It's getting more and more usable.

It would be nice if, when a computation is running in the instarepl, the computation indicator would display inline e.g. with the previous result - perhaps graying the result out?

How would I go about implementing this myself? Or is LightTable reflection not yet publicly available?

pjmlp2• 13 years ago

Eventually the editors of Smalltalk and Lisp environments of the early days will be rediscovered by youth generations it seems.

centro2• 13 years ago

Well don't keep it a secret. Where should we look?

pjmlp2• 13 years ago

Use your favorite search engine and you will be enlightened.

null_pointer• 13 years ago

I've been playing with this editor, except it seems Syntax Highlighting doesn't work (Linux x64). Which is kind of a killing point for me. Does anybody know of a forum / mailing list I can get on to figure out configuration and such? I have heard so much about this IDE, but it kills me that it doesn't seem to be working properly.

EDIT: Restarting twice seemed to fix the problem.

programnature• 13 years ago

Congrats, the improvements are quality.

Would love to switch to light table, but I need paredit. Can't switch without paredit.

Sandman• 13 years ago

Every time a new version of LT playground gets released I feel like a kid in a candy store, looking for all the cool new stuff Chris and the rest of the team put in :). Awesome work, and it just keeps getting better. To be honest, since there weren't any updates in a while, I started having doubts about whether they'll be able to deliver, but I'm glad to see that the project is alive and well.

Judging by the comments I see that there's a lot of people who haven't yet heard of Light Table, which surprised me a bit because posts about LT frequently hit the front page of HN. If you're one of those people, you should take a look at their kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/306316578/light-table

Finally, while there's a lot of people bemoaning the fact that some more popular languages (than Clojure) aren't supported out of the box, I, for one, am glad that somebody's developing such an awesome tool with Clojure in mind.

nilkn• 13 years ago

The current version of LT seems very different from what I see on that Kickstarter page.

I'm going to have to join the people who simply don't understand how to use this. It doesn't help that it seems heavily biased towards Clojure and I have no interesting Clojure codebases to play around with.

devy• 13 years ago

How do I open a new client like what Chris demo'd in the video to eval JavaScript & CSS?

rsamvit• 13 years ago

Beautiful Editor. I'd switch to it completely if it supported a more complete vim emulation -- for now I use it as a repl

truncate• 13 years ago

It still depends upon on libudev.so.0. Hence can't use it on ArchLinux (unless I fool it by linking it with latest so). :(

agentultra• 13 years ago

Nice work.

Seems to me like it's becoming emacs (which is a good thing, you should poach more ideas from it).

tapichu• 13 years ago

great, happy to see the vim mode!

sc0rb• 13 years ago

I can't wait for this to support Java so I can at least have some beautiful tools to get me through the soul sucking days of Spring development :-)

dimitris99• 13 years ago

Looks really nice. I want to use it. I also like vim.

BUT could do with some more documentation.

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

If you're going to make it vi-like, please put some effort into introducing the modal-concept, and lots of help for new users. There are reasons that many people avoid vi. You may not think that you need to make it a teaching tool, but everything else about lighttable makes it well-suited as a teaching tool.

ibdknox22• 13 years ago

You have to toggle Vim mode - then it is modal.

A new Light Table experience

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