[rhizome]

I don't mean to crap on this fresh out of the gate, but can you include a glossary that connects all the marketing-slang to the common concepts that they represent? Frankly, I barely have any idea what you're talking about over 2/3s of this post, and a lot of it smells like a coffeehouse-MBA. Sorry, only my opinion!

The most exciting addition to the playground is the ability to use your own projects as the context for the Instarepl. You do this by using the lein-light leiningen plugin. Just run lein light from one of your projects and use the sidebar's connect verb to hook into it.

A friendly (honestly!) tip about writing tutorials and helptext in general: the word "just" usually means it would be better to describe the actual steps to be taken. Think of it as a code-smell or a misplaced abstraction.

I know LT has community support and I might just be an odd man out, but the writing here is highly targeted toward initiates. Perhaps intentionally to further foster a subculture, or perhaps out of laziness, I don't know, but it's frustrating to read.

[jhickner]

I don't see any marketing speak, but there's a lot of Clojure terminology. If you're not familiar with Clojure I can see how this could be annoying.

REPL: read/eval/print/loop (think irb from Ruby, although there's more to it). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93print...

Instarepl: A portmanteau of instant and REPL, meaning a REPL that evaluates immediately as you type.

"context for the Instarepl": essentially the namespace in which the REPL executes, meaning that if you run lein-light inside your project folder you can get access to your project's functions inside LightTable.

leiningen: Clojure's most popular build tool and vector for plugins that enhance the build cycle. https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/

[alttab]

Think about getting people to use your project/app/tool as a funnel:

targeted industry -> people who are exposed to it -> people who actually investigate it -> people who actually download it -> people who actually try it once downloading it -> people who continue to use it.

You want to get as many people to that last step as possible. Unless you only care about getting closure people, appealing to a wider base will help adoption and broadening the base vocabulary is the first step.

Right now this is only appealing to closure people, and statistically only a small subset will actually go through the trouble of giving it a try. An even smaller number of people will switch to it full time. Considering mainstream development doesn't happen in closure (yet), your first part of the funnel is already pretty freakin' small.

Just my $0.02.

[ibdthor]

I agree with the funnel analogy, but I would like to point out that this release was an upgrade of the existing playground. Our purpose here was certainly not to feel exclusive or to narrow the funnel, it was to add certain features to the playground that had been requested by a large portion of our users. These playground updates are very early alpha testing - the goal is to have frequent updates to test many different features so when v1.0.0 drops, the funnel will be as wide as possible.

[ImprovedSilence]

"Unless you only care about getting closure people,"

Uh, Light Table is an IDE for clojure.

[molbioguy]

You're right, but I always understood that Light would support multiple languages. The Kickstarter site mentions "The first two languages it will support are Javascript and Clojure, but the application will be written in such a way that adding new languages can happen through plugins." And I think Python will be the third based on contributions. So it's good not to discourage people that aren't using clojure.

[Sandman]

True, but it's probably a lot easier to build an IDE by concentrating on supporting one language, at least in the beginning, and thinking about support for other languages later on. Don't forget that this is not even an alpha version of Light Table yet. This is simply a demo, showing us what we might expect. I have no doubt that both JavaScript and Python will be supported in the final version of LT.

[deafbybeheading]

I think what alttab was saying is that you should still post updates without assuming you're just talking to a bunch of clojure aficionados.

E.g., I'm somewhat interested in LT but for the other languages. I'm curious enough to check out the odd blog post now and then, but if it's all gibberish, I won't come back and may lose track of the project and miss the other language support when it does land.

[ibdknox]

Yeah, there's a ton to learn about how all this should and needs to work. Spreading ourselves across supporting the basics of multiple languages this early means our rate of learning decreases dramatically. We're using Clojure to prove a bunch of assumptions because it's the easiest to support quickly and so far it's been great. Our first goal is to build the best Clojure env out there and then move from that solid base into everything else.

[rhizome]

I think that might be a mistake in strategy. If what you posit is true, that means they're going to have to re-invent their way of talking about the interface and usage for each language, though probably they would start to settle their terminology on the third or fourth reinvention. If this is so, that means they're actually wasting energy now in tying the app story to Clojure concepts.

[jasonlotito]

I was under the impression they were going to add support for both Python and JavaScript as well.

[ibdthor]

We will :)

[tnorthcutt]

That's Clojure, not closure.

I agree with you, though.

[eragnew]

> coffeehouse-MBA

?

IMO, you have to consider the audience. Chris probably hasn't had time to build any kind of glossary for 'marketing-slang'. He's probably spent most of his time building the functionality that the new version of LT is displaying today.

The line you highlighted can make plenty of sense if you take the time to think about what each word means. There is no instant gratification for understanding.

What do I mean by that? Google 'REPL' and take the time to learn what that concept means. Do some research and play around with leiningen. I'm really not trying to be rude, but do you know what type of developers LT is aimed at right now? hint: clojure

HTH.

[ibdknox]

I'm about as far away from a "coffeehouse-MBA" as you can be haha :D Sorry though, the point wasn't to inundate people with things they didn't have the context to understand.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is an update to something already released, and terms like "Instarepl" were introduced there. Likewise, the playground itself is really only useful to people who either do Clojure or are interested in trying it out. The post contains links to things like Leiningen as that is likely new to folks starting out with Clojure, but aside from that I don't see many other Clojure specific things. Maybe it's worth reintroducing some terms every time, but I worry that serves as an equal annoyance to those who've already heard it all before.

What do you see as marketing-slang? And are there other things that made it frustrating to read?

[larskinn]

I disagree. It reads perfectly fine to me, and the terms I was unfamiliar with were defined before usage (the "sidebar" and "verbs" for instance). Although I'm familiar with Clojure, I haven't been following Light Table especially closely.

You're apparently not alone though, so it's probably a good idea to make the writeups more readable to non-Clojurians.

[dwc]

You're not the only one. I actually stopped reading and came here to read comments hoping to get a better idea.

[irahul]

> can you include a glossary that connects all the marketing-slang to the common concepts that they represent?

What you are calling "marketing slang" are actually "common concepts". The definition of common is highly context dependent. Here, the common concepts are what is known by a clojure programmer.

> and a lot of it smells like a coffeehouse-MBA >> The most exciting addition to the playground is the ability to use your own projects as the context for the Instarepl. You do this by using the lein-light leiningen plugin. Just run lein light from one of your projects and use the sidebar's connect verb to hook into it.

What kind of MBAs you hang out with who know what is REPL, leiningen, plugin etc, and use it in the copy-writing?

> A friendly (honestly!) tip about writing tutorials and helptext in general: the word "just" usually means it would be better to describe the actual steps to be taken. Think of it as a code-smell or a misplaced abstraction.

So, every time he posts an update, he explains what is a REPL, leiningen, how to install leiningen, what is lein-light, how to install lein-light, what is clojure, how to install clojure?

You just run lein light is perfectly reasonable. Had he gone into details about leiningen, that would have been fluff and totally unnecessary.

LightTable is an IDE which right now is being developed for Clojure. If you don't know Clojure, you are't the target audience. I can assure you there isn't anything in the post which isn't obvious to a clojure programmer.

[madsushi]

He means MBA like "Mac Book Air".