Light Table is an
integrated development environment
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools a ...
for
software engineering
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...
developed by Chris Granger and Robert Attorri. It features real-time feedback allowing instant execution, debugging and access to documentation.
The instant feedback provides an execution environment intended to help developing
abstractions
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstr ...
.
The development team attempted to create a program which shows the programmer what the effects of their additions are in real-time, rather than requiring them to work out the effects as they write the code.
Though the program began by supporting only
Clojure
Clojure (, like ''closure'') is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform. Like other Lisp dialects, Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system. The current development process is comm ...
, it has since aimed to support
Python
Python may refer to:
Snakes
* Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia
* Python (mythology), a mythical serpent
Computing
* Python (pro ...
and
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
.
The developers claim that the software can reduce programming time by up to 20%.
It was financed by a
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...
fundraising campaign and subsequently backed by
Y Combinator
Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...
.
The Kickstarter campaign aimed to raise $200,000 USD and finished with $316,720 USD.
See also
*
Interactive programming
Interactive programming is the procedure of writing parts of a program while it is already active. This focuses on the program text as the main interface for a running process, rather than an interactive application, where the program is design ...
*
Literate programming
Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macros and t ...
Notes
References
{{Integrated development environments
Formerly proprietary software
Free integrated development environments
Free integrated development environments for Python
Free text editors
HTML editors
Linux text editors
MacOS text editors
Software using the MIT license
Unix text editors
Windows text editors