Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Light Table VS Leo Editor

Compare Light Table VS Leo Editor and see what are their differences

Light Table logo Light Table

Light Table is a new interactive IDE that lets you modify running programs and embed anything from...

Leo Editor logo Leo Editor

Text and code editor where Outlines are first class citizen.
  • Light Table Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-21
  • Leo Editor Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-14

Light Table features and specs

  • Real-time Feedback
    Light Table provides real-time feedback as you write code, allowing for instant debugging and code corrections. This feature enhances the development speed and helps catch errors early.
  • Inline Evaluation
    The editor supports inline evaluation of code, meaning you can see the output of your code right next to it, without compiling or running the whole application. This boosts productivity and learning.
  • Plugin Ecosystem
    Light Table has a robust plugin ecosystem which allows you to extend its functionality to suit your specific coding needs. This provides considerable flexibility and customization.
  • Minimalistic Interface
    The user interface is clean and minimalistic, reducing distractions and helping developers to focus on coding tasks.
  • Responsive UI
    Light Table has a highly responsive and lag-free interface. This ensures that the development experience is fluid and seamless.

Possible disadvantages of Light Table

  • Limited Language Support
    While it supports a variety of languages, Light Table's support for newer or less common languages may be lacking compared to other more mature IDEs.
  • Community Activity
    The project has seen periods of low activity from its development community, which could be a concern for long-term support and updates.
  • Learning Curve
    Its novel interface and features can be unfamiliar to developers who are used to traditional IDEs, leading to a higher learning curve.
  • Limitations in Large Projects
    Light Table can struggle with handling very large projects, resulting in performance issues and slower response times, particularly when dealing with large codebases.
  • Dependency on Internet
    Some of its functionalities and plugins require an internet connection, which can be a limitation when working in an offline environment.

Leo Editor features and specs

  • Outline-based Structure
    Leo Editor uses a unique outline-based approach that allows users to organize and structure their projects effectively. It enables hierarchical organization, making it easy to rearrange and manage large amounts of code or text.
  • Scripting and Extensibility
    Leo Editor is highly extensible through scripting. Users can write custom scripts in Python to automate tasks, customize workflows, and enhance functionalities, making it a powerful tool for advanced users.
  • Version Control Integration
    Leo Editor integrates well with version control systems, allowing users to track changes, manage branches, and collaborate effectively on projects.
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Leo Editor runs on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, providing flexibility for users to work on their preferred platform.
  • Active Community and Support
    Leo Editor has a supportive community that contributes to its development. Users can access forums, mailing lists, and online documentation for help and resources.

Possible disadvantages of Leo Editor

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to its unique outlining approach and extensive features, new users may find Leo Editor complex and might require a significant investment of time to learn how to use it effectively.
  • Minimalistic User Interface
    Some users may find Leo Editor's interface overly simplistic or lacking in aesthetics compared to more modern editors, which might affect their user experience.
  • Niche Tool
    Leo Editor is designed for specific use cases and might not suit everyone. Its focus on outlining and scripting might be unnecessary for users who need straightforward text editing capabilities.
  • Limited Plugin Ecosystem
    Compared to other popular editors, Leo has a smaller plugin ecosystem, which could limit certain functionalities or integrations that users might be looking for.

Light Table videos

Cheap Amazon Light Table - Unboxing, Building and review

Leo Editor videos

Leo editor: intro to outline manipulation

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Light Table and Leo Editor)
Text Editors
74 74%
26% 26
IDE
63 63%
37% 37
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
Python IDE
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Light Table and Leo Editor

Light Table Reviews

10 Best Notepad++ Alternatives in 2020
Light Table is an IDE and text editor tool for software development. The tool offers fast feedback and allowing instant execution, debugging and access to documentation.
Source: www.guru99.com
10 Best Sublime Text Alternatives in 2019
Light Table is an IDE and text editor tool for software development. The tool offers fast feedback and allowing instant execution, debugging and access to documentation.
Source: www.guru99.com
Top 8 Sublime Text Alternatives You Can Use in 2019
While Light Table has limited language support compared to Sublime Text, it does come with a a few nice touches, such as Auto-complete everywhere, split views and a command palette. It also comes with a good selection of themes, but one of the major negatives of the program is that you can’t view image files in it in spite of the fact that it’s based on a browser platform....
Source: beebom.com

Leo Editor Reviews

We have no reviews of Leo Editor yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Light Table might be a bit more popular than Leo Editor. We know about 14 links to it since March 2021 and only 13 links to Leo Editor. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Light Table mentions (14)

  • How Flash Games shaped the video game industry
    Having never used the authoring tool, can you point me towards something to model it after? I think a Bret Victor, "Inventing on Principal" style editor would be perfect, combined with some sort of scratch like Python IDE where each element is defined in terms of its reactive behaviors with other elements on a timeline. https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII?t=634 With some http://lighttable.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Inline previous results in Emacs Lisp
    For those like me who have never heard of it, I think OP is referring to this: http://lighttable.com. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • GTFL – A Graphical Terminal for Common Lisp
    Http://lighttable.com/ (somewhat tangentially related, I think?) Sorry this is so scattered I need to hit the hay LOL. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • "Stop Writing Dead Programs", a thought-provoking and entertaining talk by Jack Rusher
    He's got a point. I'm surprised he didn't mention Light Table. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Best Dev Tool pitches of all time?
    There was a massive amount of excitement around Light Table when it was first announced. I remember one or more pretty amazing videos. I don't have link(s) on-hand though. http://lighttable.com/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
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Leo Editor mentions (13)

  • Ask HN: What do you think about literate programming for handover/legacy code?
    What are your experiences with literate programming for handover of code? I am thinking of tools like noweb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noweb), LEO (http://leoeditor.com/) org-mode (http://cachestocaches.com/2018/6/org-literate-programming/), scribble/lp2 (https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/lp.html#%28part._scribble_lp2_.Language%29), My experience so far is that it can be a fantastic tool for documenting... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • How to hoist the current method/function?
    I know what folding is, that's just not what I want. I want to completely hide everything that is not related to the current function. For a while, I used http://leoeditor.com/ where I could have every function/method as a node in a tree, with the node body containing just that. Looking for a way to achieve the same in vim if possible. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Organice: An implementation of Org mode without the dependency of Emacs
    The lack of good node/graph based APIs for Org Mode is my beef as well. When you compare it with the APIs of the Leo Editor[1], Org pales in comparison. Manipulation that is trivial in the Leo Editor can be quite a pain in Org mode. [1] https://leoeditor.com/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • Obsidian Dataview: Turn Obsidian Vault into a database which you can query from
    > What outliners do you know which allow end-users to feed their data into formulas for processing it without using general-purpose programming languages? Bit of a pointless constraint, the talk is about outliners, not no-code-datamangment. Which tool today does this even offer on a useful level? But you can look at leo editor (https://leoeditor.com), which is active for 20+ years, fully scriptable and extendable.... - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • LeoVue
    Leo is a pretty amazing project: Edward K. Ream treats it as his life's work, it seems to me, and his energy on the mailing lists, constantly thinking in public, is an inspiration. https://leoeditor.com/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Light Table and Leo Editor, you can also consider the following products

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

PyScripter - PyScripter is a free and open-source Python Integrated Development Environment (IDE) created with...

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

PyCharm - Python & Django IDE with intelligent code completion, on-the-fly error checking, quick-fixes, and much more...

Vim - Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing

iPython - iPython provides a rich toolkit to help you make the most out of using Python interactively.