I tried once or twice, but each version seemed to be less and less intuitive. The last version I tried even removed all the menus, you'd boot it up and just get a blank screen.
I finally switched to Cursive Clojure, stuff just worked out-of-the-box with no surprises.
My sense is that LT is amazing if you happen to prefer coding in ClojureScript or similar, and otherwise you should probably just use Atom. (Also based on Electron with a powerful plugin system.)
Interesting; there have been so many comments or threads on HN lately about the problems with Atom, it is refreshing to hear someone say something positive about it.
I used LT when learning Clojure but once you graduate to doing major production work, it's not really the best tool, too limiting.
I agree, I gave Atom a try and it was not acceptable after using emacs and seeing how fast ordinary coding editing can be. Atom felt like I was running a 15-year old computer. Not sure why in today's age with all the great UI kits out there for stuff like that, that there would be a slow text-editor, of all applications.
For what it's worth, I use Atom on a daily basis. In the end, outside of editing git messages, it just isn't that important that my editor be that fast- and for the average bit of web development during the day, it's more than up to the task after the initial folder load.
Did I have to adjust my workflow a bit for it? Sure. But honestly, the dividends its paid in terms of making it easy to create snippets, easy to fork and extend addons, and in just making me smile through dumb pretty UI things is totally enough. And the vim folks that use it and keep pushing it further and further are having a good time, 'cause aside from a few buggy commands it's a joy to vi around Atom.
Like I said in my original post- it's slow, but you can make it the perfect(if slow) editor if you want to, and that's pretty well.
It's so funny to read these concerns, especially with mention of Emacs being the faster alternative... ("Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping", "Emacs Makes a Computer Slow", ...)
It helped a bit, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea when a text editor uses up almost 90MB just to open a text file when Sublime Text opens much more in 25MB. Especially since the benefits of Atom just don't seem to be much more than ST in most, if any, people's use cases. Just seems like inefficient technologies off by a magnitude.
basically everything that is wrong with Atom is wrong with Light Table, which also now just uses the Atom backend.
I really enjoyed using light table for a few years but not working in clojure, the integrations were never really something i explored to make the weight worth it, and it often had issues with freezing for fairly simple operations.
What are the perceived advantages over the standard VIM? I understand that the core is simpler, the plugin API is better, but what would make one switch as a user?
Yep! I've used it at work on OSX for a variety of JavaScript, Clojure and ClojureScript projects for the past year and a half. There's some additional configuration that helps be more productive as with any new editor. Once I got that out of the way, it's been easy to work with. My LightTable configuration is at https://github.com/cldwalker/ltfiles
I have not. I got interested in Light Table, but it quickly became obvious that their focus was too divergent from what I consider useful. I really have no interest in an editor built on web technologies. I find some things outright weird, such as on OS X you use ⌘ rather than Ctrl. Why, exactly? Dunno. Anyway, it's an interesting project. But it's something at an awkward angle to what I want in an editor. For other people it's probably the most awesome thing ever.
History. Command is the Ctrl key of Mac, and IBM/Microsoft switched it up when they copied it. The command key is placed in the right position to be used quickly, the control key (on most laptop keyboards) is placed way off to the left or right to be very useful.
The first thing I do on a new Windows laptop is swap the left alt and ctrl keys to match the way it was meant to be. From wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_key):
> The purpose of the Command key is to allow the user to enter keyboard commands in applications and in the system. The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines have always recommended that developers use the Command key (and not the Control or Option keys) for this purpose. A small set of keyboard commands (such as cut and paste, open and save) are standard across nearly all applications, and many other commands are standardized (Find, Show Fonts). If an application needs more shortcuts than can be obtained with the twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet, double modifiers such as Command+Option are used.
> One advantage of this scheme, as contrasted with the Microsoft Windows mixed use of the Control and Alt keys, is that the Control key is available for its original purpose: entering control characters in terminal applications. (Indeed, the very first Macintosh lacked a Control key; it was soon added to allow compatible terminal software.)
> The first thing I do on a new Windows laptop is swap the left alt and ctrl keys to match the way it was meant to be
This is frustrating. I grew up on Windows machines and remember having frequent discomfort from overstretching my pinky to reach the left control key. When I first began using Macs a few years ago the first thing I remembered was thinking "Wow using the command key is so effortless!". Now I've had years of typing with zero discomfort.
I just bough a Surface Book and was dreading using a Windows keyboard again. So I searched around a bit and most recommended swapping control with alt to match the Mac keyboard like you said.
1. Why do I have to use third party software to swap alt and control in Windows?
2. I know there's some historical reason why control is the primary modifier... but here we have Microsoft developing ergonomic keyboards for 20 years and no one thought, "gee wouldn't it be more ergonomic to put the control key where the alt key is?". If that's too extreme, at least provide a simple software setting to change it!
We have companies spending $500-$1500+ on ergonomic chairs. I wonder what percentage of those using Windows machines have used third party software to swap control with alt (or caps lock). I bet less than 1% - because it's not simple for the average user. I don't know if frequent overextending of fingers leads to any serious problems or simply discomfort like I had, but it seems like such a simple thing to fix. Start releasing keyboards with control and alt swapped and provide a simple checkbox in Windows 10 to revert it for people who want the old behavior. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but hey they were brave enough to reverse the scroll direction on the touchpad and deploy that to every single OS X user AND they provide a simple way to revert the default via settings. /rant
Regarding ergonomics: keyboards are intended to be used with two hands, so if you're trying to type Ctrl + C then your left hand presses C while your right hand presses the right control key. That way you don't fatigue your hands and makes Cmd vs Ctrl something of a moot point.
Of course with the right hand on the mouse, the left hand is often used to perform both key presses. If this causes you pain, gaming mice offer programmable buttons which you could configure to give you Cmd/shift/Ctrl or other common modifier keys (or just copy/paste macros). I've seen this done to great effect.
Tell that to Microsoft. They omitted the right control key on the Surface Book. But even if they had kept it, I don't really agree that it would help much at all. Either way I'm overextending my pinky - whether it's left pinky or right pinky does not matter. Using the alt key (or to a lesser extent the caps lock key) is much better.
I'll have to disagree with you on using the mouse also. Taking my hand off the keyboard to use the mouse every time I want to Control-C, Control-V or use any other shortcuts is not really an acceptable solution.
Why are we so afraid of simply using the alt key ___location? :) Are there any Mac users who reassign command key to the "fn" ___location on their keyboards, caps lock, or their mouse? I think it's unheard of... because the command key ___location on a mac keyboard is a non-issue. The only time Mac users reassign the command key input is when they are using a Windows keyboard (to make it mimic the mac's keyboard).
Good points, and the OS X command key is easier on my hands for regular GUI tasks. You should try mapping the caps key to ctrl. It makes a lot more sense and is almost as easy to use as the command key on Mac keyboards. See http://capsoff.org/history for reference.
I made some attempts, but since I'm not a primarily Clojure developer, it wasn't for me. In fact, the only things I hear about Light Table, which are all positive, are from Clojure developers. Nobody else has ever mentioned it to me let alone something positive.
If I were them, I'd double down on becoming the de-facto Clojure/Clojurescript IDE. Lots of surprise-and-delight features out of the box.
Sorry, I didn't mean that if that's how my comment came across.
What I meant was, of all the people I know that have both positive things to say and for that matter anything to say about Light Table, they've been professional Clojure developers. Therefore from my view, if I were guiding Light Table at the moment, since it has been three years, I'd really look into pleasing and making those people a very happy customer base. I would do this at the cost of other support, because in my opinion the other languages aren't being used professionally or personally with Light Table. (Perhaps they have different metrics, but if I were them, I'd double down on making a very happy set of Clojure evangelists and then re-visit support for other languages)
I consider LighTable as the most user friendly Clojure/Clojurescript editor at the moment, for beginners is really great, you need you install it and easily you have everything to start working with Clojure. I even can imaging myself using it for moderate size Clojure projects. But is you really need something more powerful I think Cursive or Emacs are good options.
I honestly tried. I couldn't get remedial functions to work. I wanted to debug clojure. Couldn't figure it out. I know that people think functional requires no debugger, but I'm not there yet.
Electron is more active than NW.js looking at their github repos, it has had 25 releases since the last NW.js release for example. Visual Studio Code choosing electron was a big external validation too in my opinion. (no idea if that was a factor though)
Interesting. I am developing a desktop app using nwjs because a) many popular apps were made using nwjs and b) I like their documentation.
It is fascinating because both of them are quite similar in nature and picking one instead of the other doesn't mean you're missing out on a major feature.
I know I had some issues building LT on Debian 7 (long time ago now) -- and the whole bundle node+nw.js appeared to be a bit fragile. Hopefully Atom Shell is a more stable/sane/better tested platform -- it appears that's what the reasoning was if I'm reading what appears to be the relevant issue correctly:
I think it was because they ran into problems with NW (esp. freezes on OSX), but I'm not entirely sure if this was the main reason for switching to Atom/Electron.
