16 ms·

Light Table funding successful, including Python support (over $300k raised)

137 points by sthlm 14y ago

voxx 14y ago
I can't believe they (devs) chose python over ruby or java or scala or ANYTHING but python.
- david_shaw 14y ago
  They actually opened it up to additional funding specifically to include Python. That money was raised based on community support (including financial support), so now they're including it. Why are you so surprised that there'd be support/choices for Python?
- theootz 14y ago
  And what's wrong with Python?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - sgrove 14y ago
    Python's a great fit, certainly a more straight-forward one than java/scala. Presumably python/ruby would be equally interesting additions to Light Table
  - peterhajas 14y ago
    I'm guessing the commenter has a thing against Python for some reason.
- achompas 14y ago
  Fortunately Light Table will have support for packaging, so users can add any language they want.
- Tuna-Fish 14y ago
  Scala and Java are reasonably well served by traditional IDEs. Dynamic languages (such as ruby and python) are not, and based on the presentations, that's the market he is trying to serve. As for the choice between Ruby and Python, they are sufficiently similar that most of the work done to make one work will help with the other, and the choice mostly is which one he wants to support first. Python has a bigger community.
  - mark_l_watson 14y ago
    I mostly agree with you: Using IntelliJ (Java) and Rubymine (Ruby) is a great experience, however PyCharm (Python) provides the same nice dev experience. All that said, I contributed fairly early on, and I wish that they would concentrate on just Clojure. The reason for my preference is that the LT devs are going to be exploring new ways to code and experimenting with just one language seems sufficient.
- melling 14y ago
  More people program in Python so they have a larger market to target than Ruby or Scala. If you're trying to start a business that's probably the best way to choose. I would guess that Ruby would soon follow.
- dwc 14y ago
  I think it would be nice if the linked kickstarter page (which has many "why this" and "what about that" answers) explained why they chose Python. I'm pretty baffled. Just because it's popular? Better to pick C# then. Because it's... er, I can't even think of another reason.
  - sigwhite 14y ago
    Let's consider the "obvious" choices by examing the TIOBE top 10: 1. C - Not really the target audience of a tool like this. 2. Java - See above, plus plenty of competition. 3. C++ - See C. 4. Objective-C - See C, also arguably a bit of a niche (iOS). 5. C# - See Java, VirtualStudio dominates. 6. PHP - Yeah, right. 7. (Visual) Basic - Who are you kidding? 8. Python - Oh, right. 9. Perl - Only ranks high because of sys admins. 10. JavaScript - Already covered. 11. Ruby - Like Python, see below. Basically your question seems to boil down to either of these: 1. Why was Python picked over Java/C#? 2. Why was Python picked over Ruby? As for #1: the answer should seem obvious if you consider the category the three languages (JS, Clojure and Python) share. Plus, the market is very different and the competition is very strong and established. As for Ruby: It's probably personal preference. There really isn't any objective reason to pick Python over Ruby or vice versa. The two are more similar than either of them would like to admit and they are perfectly interchangeable in most situations.
- onedev 14y ago
  Because Python is great. I love it and I'm glad it's being supported. Thanks for your snide remark though.
  - voxx 14y ago
    you're welcome, scrub.
ibdknox 14y ago
Thanks to everyone: http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/06/01/45-days-later/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/06/01/45-days-later/
- guelo 14y ago
  Congrats on the funding! I'm sure you have excellent advisers and business plans at this point but I'm still going to be presumptuous and offer my advice: you need to be really frugal. $300k is not huge runway and before you know it will be gone. You need to keep any and all overhead low and plow as much as possible into development. Your project is ambitious and expectations are high, you need leeway for false starts, do-overs, pivots, impatient users, fickle press, etc. I'm really hoping along with 7,316 other people that you can pull it off. Good luck!
  - onedev 14y ago
    Please listen to this guy.
  - moe 14y ago
    $300k is not huge runway I like lighttable (and donated, too), but this is getting ridiculous. $300k is one hell of a runway. Neither Vim nor Emacs had any kind of runway. Hardly any bootstrapped startup has that kind of money lying around. The onus is now on him to deliver something worthwhile. $300k can comfortably carry an individual for 4+ years, no frugality needed at all. I sure hope we'll see results sooner than that.
    - bangbang 14y ago
      Naw, your parent is right. When you have a legit business running, there's lots of expenses that come along with it. State, local, county taxes, accountant to keep the rest out of trouble. If you have an employee, there's yet more taxes, business insurance, liability insurance the expenses really go on and on. That 300K is more like 200k, and if he wants to have help (mediocre help), it's more like 130K (50K+employment taxes, benefits?) that is unless he wants 2 helpers then it's more like 85k and that's if he doesn't pay himself... It really isn't much money. Heaven forbid he needs to buy licensing for some IP along the way.
fernandezpablo 14y ago
They say: "Ultimately the goal of the platform is to be a highly extensible work surface" Still they needed 100k for adding Python support? I guess ruby/scala support is not happening anytime soon.
- sthlm 14y ago
  I thought the whole budget was rather low compared to the total value that is to be created. Sure, 100k for 1 language sounds odd, given that 200k was enough not only for 2 languages, but also the entire framework. Still, the overall price point is more than fair. You have to take into consideration that Light Table aims to be specific; adding further languages will likely result in more efforts than merely adjusting an IDE a little bit.
  - fernandezpablo 14y ago
    I'm not saying 300k is a lot of money for LightTable. Sure, it sounds fair. I'm just saying they claim to be "highly extensible" and yet, support for a new language requires a development effort of 100k. It's sad since I mostly code in ruby or scala, these languages won't be supported and I don't think anyone is going to make a 100k development effort to support them.
    - mst 14y ago
      The fill-out-the-code-flow stuff is going to be -much- harder to do for python than for clojure, I suspect. Just because it's highly extensible doesn't mean that beating the other language's VM into doing what's needed isn't going to require a bunch of effort.
  - mwhooker 14y ago
    it's not as if we were purchasing one language. It's a stretch goal, with python as the reward. The goal and the difficulty of implementation are not related.
  - duaneb 14y ago
    Of course, the more popular language, the higher the value. $200k for a clojure IDE is certainly overvalued for the number of people using it, but $300k is way undervalued for python. Not sure about javascript; obviously it's popular, but it's unclear whether this ide supports anything but niche (non-browser) use.
redthrowaway 14y ago
Glad I got in when a license was $15. If there's one feature I'd like in the future, it's extensibility. Let dev communities write their own plugins for languages, so it doesn't all fall on Granger's lap.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  It's not just desirable; it's absolutely required. Look at every successful dev environment and you'll see a large community of developers making it better. Those that survive in spite of this (eg Xcode) do so because something else forces their continued existence (such as being the only way onto the iPhone).
bryze 14y ago
I have my own ideas about how to do this, and I'm glad someone is moving in this direction, but I must ask, is this a stepping stone in a grander vision? Enemies of software development today are: 1. Code Comprehension: Can new people quickly understand a complex code base enough to implement significant features. 2. Fault Diagnosis: When is the last time you spent less than 50% of a project's time on debugging? 3. Code Transformation: Have you ever actually tried to factor a mega-function into separate functions? How about creating a set of concrete classes when you realize that your hierarchy abstraction breaks down under new requirements. Now do all that without introducing new bugs. These are the hard problems, and it excites me that people are thinking about how to solve them. This tool will not solve all those problems, and maybe one tool shouldn't, but nevertheless I hope people will start thinking about the entire development process and how to improve all the tools of our industry.
- cageface 14y ago
  Java + a good modern IDE like IntelliJ are far from the last word on all these questions, of course, but they're much better than you might guess if you have't worked in that world for a while. I was astonished at how powerful the combination of a simple, statically typed language and a good IDE can be. You can almost completely stop thinking of code as a bunch of text and start thinking about it as an organically evolving structure. The tooling around dynamic languages is almost laughably primitive and limited in comparison.
  - theootz 14y ago
    I always loved the amount of power in java IDEs (Eclipse, for me) for refactoring code...made things so much easier.
    - 3pt14159 14y ago
      Where do you put the brains on though? In the IDE/programmer or in the language?
      - 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
soapdog 14y ago
I am a backer and I just want to say that I am anxious to see it running... =)
DivisibleByZero 14y ago
It's really exciting to see a great development tool. While I love vim and will passionately fight for it's place as the best 'text editor'. I readily recognize it's faults as a development environment. All the other tools I've seen up to this point seem to be a text editor with plugins or additional components stacked on top. Even IDEs seem to follow this pattern and are development tools built on a text editor. It is nice to see a holistic approach to designing development environment from the ground up. To me light table looks to be the first real development environment as opposed to an improvement.
nivertech 14y ago
So the total funding will be something like: $484K =~ $316K from KS + $18K from YC + $150K from Start Fund?
- dkersten 14y ago
  -KS's cut
  - JackC 14y ago
    - Amazon's cut - prize fulfillment costs At smaller scales, there can be a huge difference between sticker price and what you actually have to work with: http://kotaku.com/5902280/what-the-hell-these-game-developers-did-with-your-kickstarter-money http://kotaku.com/5902280/what-the-hell-these-game-developer...

137 points by sthlm 14y ago

voxx 14y ago

I can't believe they (devs) chose python over ruby or java or scala or ANYTHING but python.

david_shaw 14y ago
They actually opened it up to additional funding specifically to include Python. That money was raised based on community support (including financial support), so now they're including it. Why are you so surprised that there'd be support/choices for Python?
theootz 14y ago
And what's wrong with Python?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- sgrove 14y ago
  Python's a great fit, certainly a more straight-forward one than java/scala. Presumably python/ruby would be equally interesting additions to Light Table
- peterhajas 14y ago
  I'm guessing the commenter has a thing against Python for some reason.
achompas 14y ago
Fortunately Light Table will have support for packaging, so users can add any language they want.
Tuna-Fish 14y ago
Scala and Java are reasonably well served by traditional IDEs. Dynamic languages (such as ruby and python) are not, and based on the presentations, that's the market he is trying to serve. As for the choice between Ruby and Python, they are sufficiently similar that most of the work done to make one work will help with the other, and the choice mostly is which one he wants to support first. Python has a bigger community.
- mark_l_watson 14y ago
  I mostly agree with you: Using IntelliJ (Java) and Rubymine (Ruby) is a great experience, however PyCharm (Python) provides the same nice dev experience. All that said, I contributed fairly early on, and I wish that they would concentrate on just Clojure. The reason for my preference is that the LT devs are going to be exploring new ways to code and experimenting with just one language seems sufficient.
melling 14y ago
More people program in Python so they have a larger market to target than Ruby or Scala. If you're trying to start a business that's probably the best way to choose. I would guess that Ruby would soon follow.
dwc 14y ago
I think it would be nice if the linked kickstarter page (which has many "why this" and "what about that" answers) explained why they chose Python. I'm pretty baffled. Just because it's popular? Better to pick C# then. Because it's... er, I can't even think of another reason.
- sigwhite 14y ago
  Let's consider the "obvious" choices by examing the TIOBE top 10: 1. C - Not really the target audience of a tool like this. 2. Java - See above, plus plenty of competition. 3. C++ - See C. 4. Objective-C - See C, also arguably a bit of a niche (iOS). 5. C# - See Java, VirtualStudio dominates. 6. PHP - Yeah, right. 7. (Visual) Basic - Who are you kidding? 8. Python - Oh, right. 9. Perl - Only ranks high because of sys admins. 10. JavaScript - Already covered. 11. Ruby - Like Python, see below. Basically your question seems to boil down to either of these: 1. Why was Python picked over Java/C#? 2. Why was Python picked over Ruby? As for #1: the answer should seem obvious if you consider the category the three languages (JS, Clojure and Python) share. Plus, the market is very different and the competition is very strong and established. As for Ruby: It's probably personal preference. There really isn't any objective reason to pick Python over Ruby or vice versa. The two are more similar than either of them would like to admit and they are perfectly interchangeable in most situations.
onedev 14y ago
Because Python is great. I love it and I'm glad it's being supported. Thanks for your snide remark though.
- voxx 14y ago
  you're welcome, scrub.

ibdknox 14y ago

Thanks to everyone: http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/06/01/45-days-later/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/06/01/45-days-later/

guelo 14y ago
Congrats on the funding! I'm sure you have excellent advisers and business plans at this point but I'm still going to be presumptuous and offer my advice: you need to be really frugal. $300k is not huge runway and before you know it will be gone. You need to keep any and all overhead low and plow as much as possible into development. Your project is ambitious and expectations are high, you need leeway for false starts, do-overs, pivots, impatient users, fickle press, etc. I'm really hoping along with 7,316 other people that you can pull it off. Good luck!
- onedev 14y ago
  Please listen to this guy.
- moe 14y ago
  $300k is not huge runway I like lighttable (and donated, too), but this is getting ridiculous. $300k is one hell of a runway. Neither Vim nor Emacs had any kind of runway. Hardly any bootstrapped startup has that kind of money lying around. The onus is now on him to deliver something worthwhile. $300k can comfortably carry an individual for 4+ years, no frugality needed at all. I sure hope we'll see results sooner than that.
  - bangbang 14y ago
    Naw, your parent is right. When you have a legit business running, there's lots of expenses that come along with it. State, local, county taxes, accountant to keep the rest out of trouble. If you have an employee, there's yet more taxes, business insurance, liability insurance the expenses really go on and on. That 300K is more like 200k, and if he wants to have help (mediocre help), it's more like 130K (50K+employment taxes, benefits?) that is unless he wants 2 helpers then it's more like 85k and that's if he doesn't pay himself... It really isn't much money. Heaven forbid he needs to buy licensing for some IP along the way.

fernandezpablo 14y ago

They say: "Ultimately the goal of the platform is to be a highly extensible work surface" Still they needed 100k for adding Python support? I guess ruby/scala support is not happening anytime soon.

sthlm 14y ago
I thought the whole budget was rather low compared to the total value that is to be created. Sure, 100k for 1 language sounds odd, given that 200k was enough not only for 2 languages, but also the entire framework. Still, the overall price point is more than fair. You have to take into consideration that Light Table aims to be specific; adding further languages will likely result in more efforts than merely adjusting an IDE a little bit.
- fernandezpablo 14y ago
  I'm not saying 300k is a lot of money for LightTable. Sure, it sounds fair. I'm just saying they claim to be "highly extensible" and yet, support for a new language requires a development effort of 100k. It's sad since I mostly code in ruby or scala, these languages won't be supported and I don't think anyone is going to make a 100k development effort to support them.
  - mst 14y ago
    The fill-out-the-code-flow stuff is going to be -much- harder to do for python than for clojure, I suspect. Just because it's highly extensible doesn't mean that beating the other language's VM into doing what's needed isn't going to require a bunch of effort.
- mwhooker 14y ago
  it's not as if we were purchasing one language. It's a stretch goal, with python as the reward. The goal and the difficulty of implementation are not related.
- duaneb 14y ago
  Of course, the more popular language, the higher the value. $200k for a clojure IDE is certainly overvalued for the number of people using it, but $300k is way undervalued for python. Not sure about javascript; obviously it's popular, but it's unclear whether this ide supports anything but niche (non-browser) use.

redthrowaway 14y ago

Glad I got in when a license was $15. If there's one feature I'd like in the future, it's extensibility. Let dev communities write their own plugins for languages, so it doesn't all fall on Granger's lap.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
It's not just desirable; it's absolutely required. Look at every successful dev environment and you'll see a large community of developers making it better. Those that survive in spite of this (eg Xcode) do so because something else forces their continued existence (such as being the only way onto the iPhone).

bryze 14y ago

I have my own ideas about how to do this, and I'm glad someone is moving in this direction, but I must ask, is this a stepping stone in a grander vision? Enemies of software development today are: 1. Code Comprehension: Can new people quickly understand a complex code base enough to implement significant features. 2. Fault Diagnosis: When is the last time you spent less than 50% of a project's time on debugging? 3. Code Transformation: Have you ever actually tried to factor a mega-function into separate functions? How about creating a set of concrete classes when you realize that your hierarchy abstraction breaks down under new requirements. Now do all that without introducing new bugs. These are the hard problems, and it excites me that people are thinking about how to solve them. This tool will not solve all those problems, and maybe one tool shouldn't, but nevertheless I hope people will start thinking about the entire development process and how to improve all the tools of our industry.

cageface 14y ago
Java + a good modern IDE like IntelliJ are far from the last word on all these questions, of course, but they're much better than you might guess if you have't worked in that world for a while. I was astonished at how powerful the combination of a simple, statically typed language and a good IDE can be. You can almost completely stop thinking of code as a bunch of text and start thinking about it as an organically evolving structure. The tooling around dynamic languages is almost laughably primitive and limited in comparison.
- theootz 14y ago
  I always loved the amount of power in java IDEs (Eclipse, for me) for refactoring code...made things so much easier.
  - 3pt14159 14y ago
    Where do you put the brains on though? In the IDE/programmer or in the language?
    - 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

soapdog 14y ago

I am a backer and I just want to say that I am anxious to see it running... =)

DivisibleByZero 14y ago

It's really exciting to see a great development tool. While I love vim and will passionately fight for it's place as the best 'text editor'. I readily recognize it's faults as a development environment. All the other tools I've seen up to this point seem to be a text editor with plugins or additional components stacked on top. Even IDEs seem to follow this pattern and are development tools built on a text editor. It is nice to see a holistic approach to designing development environment from the ground up. To me light table looks to be the first real development environment as opposed to an improvement.

nivertech 14y ago

So the total funding will be something like: $484K =~ $316K from KS + $18K from YC + $150K from Start Fund?

dkersten 14y ago
-KS's cut
- JackC 14y ago
  - Amazon's cut - prize fulfillment costs At smaller scales, there can be a huge difference between sticker price and what you actually have to work with: http://kotaku.com/5902280/what-the-hell-these-game-developers-did-with-your-kickstarter-money http://kotaku.com/5902280/what-the-hell-these-game-developer...