Light Table is an
integrated development environment
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...
for
software engineering
Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...
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 is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal ( real or concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstraction" is the outcome of this process ...
.
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 programming language, dynamic and functional programming, functional dialect (computing), dialect of the programming language Lisp (programming language), Lisp on the Java (software platform), Java platfo ...
, it has since aimed to support
Python and
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior.
Web browsers have ...
.
The developers claim that the software can reduce programming time by up to 20%.
It was financed by a
Kickstarter
Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...
fundraising campaign and subsequently backed by
Y Combinator
Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...
.
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 desig ...
*
Literate programming
Literate programming (LP) is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of how it works in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macr ...
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