Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Light Table VS slap

Compare Light Table VS slap 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...

slap logo slap

Sublime-like terminal-based text editor
  • Light Table Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-21
  • slap Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24

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.

slap features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Slap provides a mouse-driven interface in addition to keyboard shortcuts, making it approachable for both novice and experienced users.
  • Syntax Highlighting
    It offers syntax highlighting for many programming languages, which helps in writing and understanding code by visually distinguishing elements.
  • Plugin Support
    Slap supports plugins that can extend its functionality, allowing users to customize their editing environment to better suit their needs.
  • Low Resource Usage
    Designed to be a lightweight alternative to GUI editors, it consumes fewer system resources, which is beneficial for performance on older or less powerful machines.
  • Terminal-Based
    As a terminal-based editor, it integrates well into a command-line workflow, making it a good choice for users who prefer working within a terminal environment.

Possible disadvantages of slap

  • Limited Features Compared to Full IDEs
    While slap offers many basic features, it lacks advanced functionalities that can be found in full Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as code refactoring tools and advanced debugging capabilities.
  • Learning Curve for Terminal Users
    Users unfamiliar with terminal-based text editors might face an initial learning curve when adjusting to its interface and keyboard shortcuts.
  • Active Maintenance
    As of the latest updates, the project may not see active maintenance or support, which could pose issues with updating or fixing bugs in the future.
  • Compatibility Issues
    Being a terminal-based editor, it might have compatibility issues with certain terminal environments or configurations.

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

slap videos

Everyone is Talking About This Slap

More videos:

  • Review - Slap Fighting is the Dumbest 'Sport' Ever - Doctor Reacts to Dana Whiteโ€™s New League
  • Review - The Slap Heard Around The World

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Light Table and slap)
Text Editors
88 88%
12% 12
IDE
86 86%
14% 14
Productivity
82 82%
18% 18
Programming
100 100%
0% 0

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 slap

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

slap Reviews

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

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Light Table should be more popular than slap. It has been mentiond 14 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
View more

slap mentions (3)

  • Command line applications
    Yes, you can create whatever you want - from simple CLI utils , through moderately complex interactive tools (example by me), to complex, full-fledged command line applications (example, another example). Source: almost 4 years ago
  • Admit it, you only edit .CONF files with it anyway...
    In that spirit: I just found Slap (https://github.com/slap-editor/slap). Looks cool, but haven't installed it yet. Clearly best editor ever!!! Obviously better than vim. Source: about 5 years ago
  • Micro - Text Editor
    There is also the slap editor which tries to mimic Sublime in the terminal, but it's very bloated and seems to have been abandoned. Source: over 5 years ago

What are some alternatives?

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

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

Daybridge - A calendar built for people, not companies.

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.

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

Textadept - Textadept is a cross-platform text editor that runs on different types of platforms, that allows to control over the application using Lua programming language.

GNU Emacs - GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editorโ€”and more.