
Light Table reaches funding goal of $200k - kevinalexbrown
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table/backers
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ibdknox
I've been a little quiet lately as I've been working on the next demo before
the end of the Kickstarter. Based on the reactions I've gotten so far, I think
you guys are in for a treat :)

~~~
hkmurakami
What's most exciting about this whole thing, is the prospect of a new and
potentially, hopefully, more flexible mode of sustenance for software
developers world wide.

The initial financial risk of the develop first, market later model seems to
be greatly mitigated by the kickstarter approach. The market can be validated
in real terms, with _real money_ , before a developer has to take the plunge.
Striking out on your own was (perhaps) never so easy.

The new model may very well liberate many developers from the financial
shackles that bind them to their day jobs; it may create more stories of the
Marco Arment lineage: independent, flexible, balanced.

With each new successful story like Light Table that comes along, the more
convinced others will become that independent software development as a living
may very well be possible for themselves as well.

~~~
zanny
I advise caution - successful funding does not yet mean successful product.
The greatest threat to Kick-starter is the strong potential for projects to
devolve into marketing drives for funding followed by people running off with
the money, because they have no liability.

One of the big budget endeavours will fail to come to fruition, and the entire
internet will throw a gasket, and then we will see if the model is sustainable
without having contractual obligations from the fundee.

~~~
jmathai
I can attest to that. My project met it's goal of $25k over a year ago when
the largest project was still < $1M. It was great market validation. But I was
surprised at how much market validation was still left. It didn't deter me
though since I know building a business is hard regardless.

I think $200k is still low enough that the market and product needs to be
vetted. Pebble at $10M isn't such. Only they can screw it up themselves at
this point.

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vibrunazo
I'm complete ignorant at programming languages. But I've seen this video a few
times, and it still seem like each feature are things I already do every
single day of my life as an Android developer. Live documentation, organizing
your work around functions, watching values and expressions change on debug
etc. These are all things I already do every day.

So suppose lighttable adds support for Android development. How exactly would
lighttable help me? What exactly can I do with it that I cannot do right now?

Are you guys backing this up just because it looks visually different? Is it
because the languages it supports just don't have good tools for like Java
does? Or am I missing something obvious here?

~~~
jakejake
I see here a possible cyclic thing happening with development environments.
I've watched a lot of friends abandon IDEs in favor of more lean setup like
textmate, or going the direction of emacs.

Lighttable strikes me as a possible move back towards a full IDE environment.
A lot of the things shown here are already available on Eclipse but it's
presented here with a much cleaner visual design.

The one thing Eclipse doesn't do is the "live" debugging with value
substituting. I do think that would be very, very helpful. I could see that
being implemented as an Eclipse plugin as well and it would be extremely
useful in certain cases.

~~~
DannoHung
I hope LightTable has really good keyboard based controls. The reason I prefer
terminal environments more is just being able to not have to constantly mode
switch between keyboarding and mouse pointer.

~~~
jakejake
It seems to be based on <http://codemirror.net/> so you could probably check
that out and see the keyboard support. I wonder if the final product will be a
browser-based editor as well..?

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jf
If anybody else is interested, here is a Web Numbr graph of the funding for
Light Table over time: <http://webnumbr.com/light-table-pledged> (Sadly, I
didn't think of setting this up until it was really far along).

~~~
vmind
There's also Kicktraq, which has a longer history and a rough trend to total.
<http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table/>

(webnumbr looks really nice for watching random pages that don't have
dedicated trackers, though)

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gits1225
Light Table is an interesting _approach_. I think, it would turn out to be
something different & interesting if the project leverages that aspect of it.
There are lots of editors which have already done a fine job of editing code.
Unless a new interface to computers comes along, those are here to stay.

What I am trying to say I guess is that, if the project separated the
_approach_ and _editing_ aspects of coding, and then integrated the approach
aspect with already existing editors (or an API/protocol of sorts, like what X
server is to the various WM/DE); I believe it will turn into something really
interesting.

~~~
ibdknox
I'm inclined to agree. You cannot beat Vim and Emacs as editors... the key is
to play a game they can't. I mean to show some examples of that with the next
demo :)

~~~
julian37
Maybe I'm misreading your reply, but I think you might have misunderstood
gits1225's comment. What (s)he was saying is that it would be great if your
system would be open so that it could (eventually) be integrated into existing
editors. Your reply, on the other hand, talks about "beating" these editors--
to me that doesn't sound like you're interested in interoperability.

For what it's worth, I wholeheartedly agree with gits1225. I think will be
very hard for you and your team to even remotely approach the editing
facilities offered by Emacs or Vim, seeing that these facilities have evolved
over decades--especially in a web editor which is subject to a number of
constraints.

If your system could somehow (again, eventually) augment these editors--or, if
you prefer, _be augmented_ by them--rather than attempt to replace them, then
in my mind this would be a win-win for everybody.

~~~
DannoHung
Yup yup yup! Respect the $EDITOR if possible please!

Maybe do something like use Ctrl-B as a way to issue keyboard commands to
Light Table or break out of an editor window.

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pessimizer
Yesterday, as a last resort after a day and a half of unproductive
frustration, I printed out a bunch of code from five or six different (too
tightly coupled!) files that I was trying to refactor, spread them around my
desk to get some sort of handle on it, and attacked them with a red pen.

Needless to say, I'm in for $50.

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Nate75Sanders
There was some talk of Python support -- perhaps if the project reaches $300K
or something along those lines.

Is there definitive information on this? How will the fund-raising proceed, in
a logistics/mechanics sense if this is true?

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andreyf
It's right in the description: "If we hit $300k, Python will be the third
language to be supported out of the gate."

~~~
Nate75Sanders
I see it now, thanks.

I guess my concern is that that's pretty far down the page and since the the
fact that the $200K goal has been met is prominent, that message might not get
across very well.

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modeless
This is a really interesting method of funding a software project. It doesn't
seem sustainable though. People might (maybe) be willing to fund a "Light
Table 2.0" project but certainly nobody would care to fund an "ongoing
maintenance and bugfixes for Light Table 1.0" project.

Perhaps the Kickstarter model could be adapted to fund maintenance and
bugfixes too. Popular open source projects always have the problem that their
bug trackers get spammed with passionate complaints from well-meaning but
frustrated users. I'm imagining a public bug tracker where users can pay to
raise the priority of their favorite bugs. Not necessarily a "bug bounty"
system, but just a way of raising money for the project overall while
simultaneously giving frustrated users a productive outlet and reducing spam.

~~~
Zirro
I may have missed something, but I believe the point is to get it developed
with the help of Kickstarter-money in the first place and then sell through
the normal channels to fund future development. As incentive for backers, they
most likely get away with a cheaper price than the one we'll see later when
the first version is out for sale.

~~~
modeless
It's not entirely clear how it can require a license and be open source at the
same time. I suppose we'll see how open it really is when it's released. But
selling licenses doesn't preclude also having a way to pay for bug fixing
priority.

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jes5199
I know someone who wrote GPL software and sold alternate non-GPL licenses -
apparently (at the time, at least) some organizations had very paranoid
lawyers who won't allow any GPL software to be used. He called it the "Sap"
license. Those particular companies tended to have deep pockets, so this
worked out.

~~~
stcredzero
_some organizations had very paranoid lawyers who won't allow any GPL software
to be used._

I was working for such an organization a few years ago. On top of that, one of
the founders would even post "anti-communist" rants against Open Source on the
company intranet.

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brcrth
Since Light Table relies on CodeMirror (AFAIK), will some amount of money go
to Marijn Haverbeke, along with other kinds of contributions to his project?

~~~
ibdknox
We'll definitely be working something out with him. :)

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stcredzero
A suggestion - find volunteers to develop an automated test suite for
responsiveness:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3964829>

If your tool is dependably correct and responsive, it will be a classic.

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k_bx
As a python guy, I don't want python support. That would be one more reason
for lazy me to go there and learn/play with some Clojure :)

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mpusr
I notice very careful wording in relation to the open sourcing of it. This
along with the fact that they're offering licenses as a funding reward.

To what extent will this be open source?

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vinayan3
I heard no mention of how the keyboard input will work. I love using Emacs.
The keyboard short cuts sometimes seem so odd but come in handy.

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natch
I'm not a hater, but am a skeptic. Enough with the demos, how about making an
MVP?

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munchor
This IDE/text editor has some very good ideas, but I would never use it
because it doesn't seem like it will be open source, free software, or even
freeware.

I wouldn't rely on a text editor that can't be improved and changed by the
community.

Besides, it seems to run inside the browser, and most browsers (even for a
single tab) consume quite some RAM.

Good luck, nonetheless!

~~~
ibdknox
It will absolutely be open source. You just didn't read the FAQ ;)

