Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Light Table VS Polygonjs

Compare Light Table VS Polygonjs and see what are their differences

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Light Table logo Light Table

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

Polygonjs logo Polygonjs

Create amazing & interactive 3D scenes for the web
  • Light Table Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-21
  • Polygonjs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-27

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.

Polygonjs features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Polygonjs offers an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface that allows users to efficiently create and manipulate 3D scenes without needing extensive prior experience.
  • Node-Based Workflow
    Utilizing a node-based approach, Polygonjs allows for a modular and flexible design process, enabling users to easily adjust, reuse, and combine different elements of their 3D scenes.
  • Web Integration
    Polygonjs is designed to integrate seamlessly with web technologies, making it suitable for developing interactive 3D applications directly on the web.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    The platform offers extensive documentation and tutorials that help users to quickly understand and maximize the utility of the software's features.
  • Customization and Extensibility
    Polygonjs supports customization and allows developers to extend its functionality with their own plugins and scripts, ensuring high adaptability to specific project needs.

Possible disadvantages of Polygonjs

  • Steep Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic operations are user-friendly, mastering advanced features of Polygonjs can be challenging for new users who are not familiar with 3D graphics concepts.
  • Performance Limitations
    As a web-based application, Polygonjs might experience performance limitations when dealing with extremely large or complex 3D scenes.
  • Dependence on WebGL
    Being reliant on WebGL can be a disadvantage, especially when considering compatibility issues or performance on older devices or less supported browsers.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    Due to its web-based nature, working offline can be restrictive unless specific solutions are implemented to handle such workflows.
  • Community and Support
    As a relatively new platform, Polygonjs might have a smaller community, which may limit user-driven support, readily available community plugins, and resources compared to more established tools.

Analysis of Light Table

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Light Table is a good choice for developers looking for an interactive and lightweight IDE that encourages experimentation. However, it may lack some of the more advanced features of other IDEs, and the project has seen less activity in recent years, which may affect its viability for long-term projects.

Why this product is good

  • Light Table is an integrated development environment (IDE) known for its real-time feedback capabilities and its focus on providing a reactive experience to developers. It offers a simple, clutter-free interface that is highly customizable. Its ability to instantly display the results of code execution allows developers to experiment and iterate quickly, which makes it appealing for learning and prototyping. The IDE supports various programming languages through plugins, making it versatile for different coding needs.

Recommended for

    Light Table is recommended for beginners who appreciate immediate feedback while learning to code, as well as for experienced developers looking to prototype new ideas quickly. It is particularly suited for users who favor minimalistic design and those who are working with languages that have strong plugin support in Light Table.

Light Table videos

Cheap Amazon Light Table - Unboxing, Building and review

Polygonjs videos

Polygonjs WebGL design tool demo

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Light Table and Polygonjs)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
3D
0 0%
100% 100
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Design Tools
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 Polygonjs

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 canโ€™t view image files in it in spite of the fact that itโ€™s based on a browser platform....
Source: beebom.com

Polygonjs Reviews

We have no reviews of Polygonjs yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Polygonjs should be more popular than Light Table. It has been mentiond 138 times since March 2021. 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 / over 1 year 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 / about 2 years ago
  • GTFL โ€“ 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 / about 2 years 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: almost 4 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 / about 4 years ago
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Polygonjs mentions (138)

  • Show HN: Checkers Twist โ€“ The game Checkers/Draughts/Dames on an irregular grid
    - some corners will connect less than 4 tiles. This does the opposite of the previous point, as this removes diagonals. This limits your moves in a specific direction, but can also protect you from your opponents. It's the kind of features that can be used both as a defense and as attack. And the boards are procedurally generated, so you can play unique games each time (or you can re-use the same boards if you... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • On the importance to make games during the game engine's development
    That's the path I took with Polygonjs ( https://polygonjs.com ), and a game I've just released ( https://polyreplay.com/minesweepertwist ), with more coming shortly. But it didn't start like that. It only started as a tool I could use to deliver client projects, as I was trying to become a freelance for interactive 3D scenes for the web. Project after project ( some examples here: https://polygon-lab.com/ ), I... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Threestudio โ€“ A unified framework for 3D content generation
    I'm building one, called Polygonjs ( https://polygonjs.com/ ), you have a few examples to play with ( https://polygonjs.com/docs/examples ). - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • how can I convert a 3D model into an SDF, a signed distance field
    You can have a look how I do it in Polygonjs (which is a node-based design tool based on threejs), in this example scene. Source: over 2 years ago
  • ThreeJS capabilities
    If you're familiar with Houdini, I invite you to try Polygonjs, which is based on threejs and inspired by Houdini. You can basically build threejs in a procedural way, with just nodes. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

Spline - Design tool for 3d web experiences

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.

Three.js - A JavaScript 3D library which makes WebGL simpler.

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

Three.js Journey - The best course to learn how to create stunning 3D websites