Hi !

Firstly I use LT for all my Clojure work, both Clj and Cljs every day. 
Cursive is certainly impressive, but not for me as I like being able to 
easily modify and customize my Editor and I love the fact that I can write 
ClojureScript for plugins and customization. My colleagues use Cursive, but 
they are still envious how easy it is for me to start a Clojure or 
ClojureScript repl session :-)

Secondly I'm one of the maintainers of LT, but I don't have that much spare 
time to spend on it as I would have liked. There's no hiding that LT needs 
more hands to help out keep it going.

*Instarepl*
Instarepl was removed from the core distribution and is available as a 
separate plugin (https://github.com/LightTable/ClojureInstarepl). The 
instarepl plugin needs a maintainer. Up for grabs for anyone willing.
The decission to remove it from the core distribution was driven by two 
things: 1. Less to maintain 2. None of the maintainers used it for anything 
but toy stuff. Personally I use inline evaluation instead which I find much 
more useful for real work.


*Autocompletion*
Once you have connected an editor/project to a repl (either using nrepl or 
the default local repl created when connecting to a project) 
autocompletions should kick in. Why this isn't working for you I don't 
know, but feel free to get in touch on gitter to explain your problem, 
alternatively submitt an issue (SCSSE) in the 
https://github.com/LightTable/Clojure repo.

However it should be said that the autocompletions in clojure has issues 
that for some users cause editor hangs. It's quite a heisenbug which we 
haven't managed to resolve yet.
In terms of exploring Clojure Software you have atleast:
- Autocomplete (with it's caveats and limitations)
- Inline doc
- Jump back/forth (including jump to source for third-party libs)

> Essentially, all the good features that caused LT to raise so much more 
money that Chris Granger wanted, have been disabled.  Is that the case, or 
can things be made better?
I'm not going to comment on the kickstarter promises. Chris has long gone 
from the project and left the project. It's been opensourced and a few 
voluenteers have taken over to try to keep it alive and bring it forward. 
You can't hold the current maintainers responsible for whatever "promises" 
the kickstarter may given in terms of expectations and feature promises.  

Whining doesn't help anyone, contributing would be much more constructive 
IMHO.


*Plugins*A few plugins that's worth mentioning:
- For improved paredit support you might want to consider my Parembrace 
plugin: https://github.com/rundis/parembrace
- A while back I' also spent a ton of time creating : 
https://github.com/rundis/clj-light-refactor However I haven't had time to 
keep it alive up to date, but If someone would be willing to chip in/help 
out. There is a pretty big potential to improve clojure support 
substantially in LT with this plugin.
- There is a linter plugin https://github.com/bbbates/lt-clojure-linter 
(not using it myself so I don't know how useful it is)
- Also there is parinfer plugin 
https://github.com/mauricioszabo/lt_parinfer (again not using it myself)


*Other stuff*
Most of my the last year I've spent on adding Elm support for Light Table 
through the https://github.com/rundis/elm-light plugin. I would argue it 
provides the most feature rich editor support for Elm of any of the editors 
out there as of now. Might not be relevant for a Clojure developer, but it 
illustrates how much can be done to improve LIght Table through plugins if 
only folks are willing to contribute.


Finally to answer your most important question:
> Is there any definitive method to get Light Table to be impressive once 
again?
I don't think it's as shabby as you seem to think, but yeah it deffo needs 
improvements both Clojure wise and the Core of LT as well. T

But to make it really good and not just barely holding on, the real answer 
is that more people need to step up and contribute.

There are many levels of contributing...; 
- Submitting issues
- Doing QA of issue fixes
- submitting PRs
- improving documentation
- creating cool plugins (the plugin mechanism in LT is superpowerful and 
once the docs are up to scratch it shouldn't be to hard either. Working In 
Progress here: 
https://www.gitbook.com/book/lighttable/light-table-developers-guide/details


kind regards
-magnus







 


On Saturday, 31 December 2016 16:41:33 UTC+1, afro54 wrote:
>
> Hi,
> Please excuse any sense of whining that you get from this - I just want to 
> know if I can configure LT to be as useful as it once was.
>
> 1)  I badly miss the instarepl and, despite my efforts, I haven't been 
> able to replicate the functionality.  
> Instarepl is available in Nightcode but, the app isn't quite there in 
> terms of multi-tab editing and a few other (minor) features.  Sometimes, 
> I'm using LT to launch NC, which points to my frustration.
> 2) I badly miss code-completion.  Why on earth do I fail to even get this 
> feature?  It means that, the more I try to explore Clojure software, the 
> more I have to try and remember.
>
> Essentially, all the good features that caused LT to raise so much more 
> money that Chris Granger wanted, have been disabled.  Is that the case, or 
> can things be made better?
>
> I can connect to nrepls that I launch - this helps very little.
>
> Auto-complete works on my .behavior files but, not my .clj files - what is 
> that all about - I really need to fix that.
> I require dependencies but, receive no documentation support in using 
> them.  
>
> I ask because I am watching this tutorial using Cursive and IntelliJ, and 
> it makes me want to cry, that setup seems so productive to use.
>
> Is there any definitive method to get Light Table to be impressive once 
> again?  Any configurations that can restore my pride in the LT environment?
>
> Even more generally, if people are dumping LT, despite being fans of LT, 
> what alternative should I consider? 
>
> Thanks, all.
>

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