Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Light Table VS StackBlitz

Compare Light Table VS StackBlitz 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...

StackBlitz logo StackBlitz

Online VS Code Editor for Angular and React
  • Light Table Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-21
  • StackBlitz Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-20

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.

StackBlitz features and specs

  • Speed
    StackBlitz is known for its quick load times and fast editing capabilities, making it ideal for rapid development and testing.
  • Ease of Use
    The interface is intuitive and user-friendly, allowing developers to get started quickly without a steep learning curve.
  • Zero-Setup
    Users can write, compile, and run code directly in the browser without any setup or configuration required.
  • Integrations
    StackBlitz integrates seamlessly with GitHub, allowing for easy import and export of repositories.
  • WebContainers
    StackBlitz uses WebContainers to run Node.js applications in the browser, providing a near-native development experience.
  • Collaboration
    Real-time collaboration features allow multiple users to work on the same project simultaneously, similar to Google Docs.

Possible disadvantages of StackBlitz

  • Limited Plugins
    Unlike traditional IDEs like VSCode or IntelliJ, StackBlitz has a limited ecosystem of plugins and extensions.
  • Online Dependency
    StackBlitz requires an internet connection to function, which can be a limitation for developers who need to work offline.
  • Performance
    For very large projects or those requiring extensive computational resources, performance may degrade compared to local development environments.
  • Mobile Accessibility
    While StackBlitz is accessible on mobile devices, the user experience is not as optimized as it is on desktop browsers.
  • Limited Framework Support
    Although StackBlitz supports many popular frameworks, it doesn't support all frameworks or versions, which could be limiting for some projects.
  • Storage and Persistence
    Files and data are stored in the cloud, which might raise concerns around data privacy and persistence for some users.

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

StackBlitz videos

StackBlitz - Online Code Editor For Angular and React - Introduction

More videos:

  • Review - Using Stackblitz for html css javascript, make websites, web development

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Light Table and StackBlitz)
Text Editors
37 37%
63% 63
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Programming
33 33%
67% 67
Productivity
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 StackBlitz

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

StackBlitz Reviews

  1. Has almost everything I need

    I've started using this as my main IDE for new projects when I'm trying things out. If it keeps getting better at the rate it has been, it'll be even better than coding locally.

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: replit
    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Easy to get started and operate|Fast|Supports common extensions|Works with most npm packages
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Still not as good as local development|Can be hard to debug|Build times can be slower than local

12 Best Online IDE and Code Editors to Develop Web Applications
All applications created on StackBlitz also get deployed automatically on their servers! So, this Angular toy app I just created is hosted automatically on https://angular-yvyi2j.stackblitz.io/. Most likely, the URL is still working (will load slowly, though, as youโ€™d expect when hosted for free)!
Source: geekflare.com
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
StackBlitz claims to allow you to code the future in your browser. And after trying it, Iโ€™m confident youโ€™ll agree that this web application is extremely useful for coders.
Source: techarge.in

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, StackBlitz should be more popular than Light Table. It has been mentiond 112 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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StackBlitz mentions (112)

  • RS-X: Framework-agnostic reactive state and expressions for JavaScript/TS
    Managing reactive state and dependent computations in JavaScript can get complex, especially when combining asynchronous and synchronous data. RS-X is a library that allows you to bind expressions to plain objects and makes the parts of the model used by those expressions fully reactive. Dependent computations automatically update when the underlying data changes. RS-X is framework-agnostic. While it can drive UI... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Show HN: I combine Htmx, LiveView and SolidJS for interactive server components
    I like htmx, LiveView, React and Solid. They are great at different points, so I try to combine them in Solv (Stateless Offline-capable LiveView) and write a prototype to show the benefits. Solv's main idea is that stateless servers keep client's state in a volatile cache. It enables server components that are also interactive, which is best of both worlds between LiveView and htmx. Then fine-grained reactivity is... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Show HN: Solv โ€“ Stateless Offline-Capable LiveView โ€“ Prototype 03
    I like htmx, LiveView, React and Solid. They are great at different points, and this is a prototype trying to combine them. Solv's main idea is that stateless servers keep client's state in a volatile cache. It enables server components that are also interactive, which is best of both worlds between LiveView and htmx. Then fine-grained reactivity is added to achieve efficient DOM updates + minimal payload size.... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • AutoView - turning your blueprint into UI components (AI Code Generator)
    In the code editor tab (powered by StackBlitz), navigate to the env.ts file and enter your OpenAI key. Run npm run generate in the terminal to see how @autoview generates TypeScript frontend code from example schemas derived from both TypeScript types and OpenAPI documents. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • 22 Unique Developer Resources You Should Explore
    URL: https://stackblitz.com What it does: An online IDE for coding, previewing, and deploying web apps instantly. Why it's great: Rapidly spin up projects without local setups โ€” great for experimentation. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

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.

replit - Code, create, andlearn together. Use our free, collaborative, in-browser IDE to code in 50+ languages โ€” without spending a second on setup.

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

CodePen - A front end web development playground.