Chris's post on the LT mailing list 1 year ago[1]:
Depending on how things play out, it might make sense to try and merge
[with atom.io]. [...]
The main value of LT isn't about being a better standard editor, it's
taking that editor and making it do things that standard ones can't do.
[...]
From the outset, our goal has been to make programming better and I've
honestly come to the conclusion that LT on its own can't do that. [...]
The truth is that I think we can do orders of magnitude better and I have
some evidence of that already, but it's going to take more than a new tool.
It's going to take a different way of thinking about the problem. That is
what I think will end up being the ultimate legacy of Light Table -
a version of programming that is meaningfully designed for humans. You've
heard us mention "Aurora" a number of times now and I think that's the best
description for this crowd of what we're out to accomplish; programming
designed for humans. This often comes as a surprise to people, but
I honestly don't like to program very much - it just happens to be the only
way to create the things I want.
It should have been clear by then that the LT author had lost interest. That's when I decided[2] to concentrate on making Vim/Emacs better instead of trying to find (or make) a "perfect" foundation upon which the already existing Vim/Emacs plugins could be rebuilt. There's a reason why Sublime re-uses Textmate themes; and Java is useful (tons of libraries) even though it's boring; and Linux is widespread even though it's inelegant compared to Hurd or whatever: there's a giant mountain of existing, working boring tools already built--tools that you will not want to rewrite after your perfect platform is done.
Neovim popped up around that time and for the above reasons it made sense to me. If the foundation is imperfect, do the dirty work to make the foundation less-imperfect. With 10% of the work[3], I think Neovim can enable 90% of the goodies I (we?) wanted in LT (and 100% of the visual appeal).
Based on what he said just now, I do not think it is accurate to say he has "lost interest":
In my particular case I'm basically working all but a couple of my waking hours, weekends and all - so relying on me won't work, though I'm here to help answer questions and point people in the right direction as much as I can.
That is, he's still working on it all the time, which I take to mean he is still interested in it. Rather, he is giving a frank assessment for why LT has not gotten more traction as an open source project.
Neovim popped up around that time and for the above reasons it made sense to me. If the foundation is imperfect, do the dirty work to make the foundation less-imperfect. With 10% of the work[3], I think Neovim can enable 90% of the goodies I (we?) wanted in LT (and 100% of the visual appeal).
[1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/light-table-discussion/YTuCH...
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/1ztxgd/why_atom_cant_re...
[3] Remember: don't discount the work of writing plugins.