It's playtime - Light Table Playground released

24 Jun 2012 - Chris Granger

I’m happy to announce the official release of the Light Table Playground! You can find instructions for getting it here: http://app.kodowa.com/playground

light table playground

What is the playground?

The playground is a chance for you to follow along as we test out new things for Light Table. In return, it helps us collect metrics on how people are using our experiments as well as gives us an opportunity to see how certain concepts fare in the real world. All in all, it keeps us connected to you guys and you guys connected to us.

light table instarepl

Currently, the playground includes what we call the “instarepl” for Clojure. This is the real-time evaluation and code-flow stuff we showed in the first video. It serves as a fun scratch pad for either learning Clojure or when you’re working and trying out random things. A number of folks have been using it to do 4Clojure or Project Euler problems, which can be a great starting point if you’re new to the language and itching to try something.

Wait, what’s Kodowa?

Kodowa is the official entity behind Light Table. It’s still early days for us, so we’re not quite ready to introduce it fully, but don’t be surprised if you see the name associated with Light Table more as time goes on.

The plan moving forward

The playground is a very stripped down version of Light Table, but it helps us prove out the platform necessary to support the vision we’ve laid out. With the update mechanism built into it, we’ll be releasing new things often with the goal of turning it into a full-fledged Clojure environment over the next few months. At the end of which, we’ll have a solid foundation to continue forward on. Our hope is that you’ll follow along with us, so that we can learn more about you and maybe introduce some new minds to Clojure.

There are very exciting things to come and now that we’ve hit this milestone, we can do a lot more than just tell you about what we’re thinking - we can begin to show you.