I am an Eclipse power user myself but alas Eclipse is not an effective option if I need to drop into a remote server and cut some code. (Yes, I use VIM for these occasions.) And let's be perfectly frank: developers who get their start on IDEs are typically (not all, don't be offended) relatively clueless on the command line. IntelliSense gives these what unix commands have long given the developers who got their start on _nix, vim/emacs, and find, grep, awk, sed, etc. [their] way through their workflow.
My personal take on LightTable is purely aesthetic; I think it is gorgeous. Eclipse (and even IDEA) are really too noisy and just feel heavy. Psychological aspect of programming is very important. To wit, IDEs encourage complexity and bloat and fat function/methods. On the other side of the cultural divide, the tools really encourage (but don't force) you to be concise. Naturally, the language being used also has a significant say on what is idiomatic code.
I think it is perfectly fair to say that the LightTable concept may not scale to cover the entire spectrum of developers, but given a matrix of workflow, language, and development environment, it probably hits a sweet spot for a not so insignificant segment of coders out there.
To wit, IDEs encourage complexity and bloat and fat function/methods
I write all my Clojure code in IntelliJ, using a (customised) version of La Clojure. Could you explain to me how this encourages complexity and bloat in my code?
He is talking of programmers who start programming with IDE's and nothing else. If you belong to this category it will difficult to explain you the very concept of bloat, because that is what you have started with and feel it to be perfectly normal.
Most people who program in Editors I know read the documentation, manual and tutorial better. They think and code. On the other hand IDE only programmers I know can't write even simple functional programs without IDE, autocompletion and intellisense.
Take a big Java project and try to work on it without IDE/eclipse/IntelliJ, that would give a true picture of how much work IDE had automated for you.
I am an Eclipse power user myself but alas Eclipse is not an effective option if I need to drop into a remote server and cut some code. (Yes, I use VIM for these occasions.) And let's be perfectly frank: developers who get their start on IDEs are typically (not all, don't be offended) relatively clueless on the command line. IntelliSense gives these what unix commands have long given the developers who got their start on _nix, vim/emacs, and find, grep, awk, sed, etc. [their] way through their workflow.
My personal take on LightTable is purely aesthetic; I think it is gorgeous. Eclipse (and even IDEA) are really too noisy and just feel heavy. Psychological aspect of programming is very important. To wit, IDEs encourage complexity and bloat and fat function/methods. On the other side of the cultural divide, the tools really encourage (but don't force) you to be concise. Naturally, the language being used also has a significant say on what is idiomatic code.
I think it is perfectly fair to say that the LightTable concept may not scale to cover the entire spectrum of developers, but given a matrix of workflow, language, and development environment, it probably hits a sweet spot for a not so insignificant segment of coders out there.