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Why nobody talks about Lua

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Re: Why nobody talks about Lua

#21

Post by WalkingDead »

rubyrescue wrote: post #12
ardit33 wrote: post #4

Lua is used a lot, but usually as a command and control language. Meaning that it is always used together with another language/system, where performance matters, both for runtime and development time, and memory constrains.. One of the the reasons that it hasn't caught on the server side is that the server engineers are lazy (in the friendly way), and have it easy. If you have performance problems, you can just thro…

I think the explosion of node.js is actually evidence of what you're saying; the web guys who were scared of the server are taking their javascript skills there via node.js. Perhaps it could happen when a generation of iPhone developers who have written games in Lua decide they want to do some server side development. I have less hope that Lua will take off though. Appropriately, I'm giving a talk on Lua/Erlang integ…

I am still waiting for node.js for windows.

Re: Why nobody talks about Lua

#22

Post by samps »

iamwil wrote: post #11
m0th87 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python and Ruby largely continue the class-based object oriented model and are thus easy to pick up if you come from a C++/Java background. While JavaScript is prototype-based, and thus somewhat exotic, it at least maintains the syntactic heritage of C/C++, so it's not as scary as it otherwise might be for beginners. Plus most in the web development background have already known the language for years. Perhaps the re…

_why wrote a web server in lua, just for fun. It's available as a lua rock (like a ruby gem or python egg).

Got a link?

Re: Why nobody talks about Lua

#23

Post by chipsy »

jrockway wrote: post #15
silentbicycle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, you can find a reason to write off every language in existence. Lisp has all those parens. Python has the whitespace. Perl...is Perl. Etc. Nothing's perfect. Lua's a pretty good language, though. It's completely replaced Python as my default language (much like Python replaced Perl years before), because, while it too has its surface annoyances, it makes a lot of other very intelligent trade-offs. For example,…

Yeah, I like Lua. I was just trying to be funny :)

I chuckled because it felt fresh, but it does come off as another kind of programmer-snark like better-known cliches about Lisp(parens), Python(whitespace), Java(overengineering), etc.

Re: Why nobody talks about Lua

#24

Post by chipsy »

I have trouble finding a use for Lua, even though I like it better as a language than most.

The problem is that it isn't a good "starting place" for an app. Instead you write something in C/C++ and say "oh, I wish I had a dynamic language for this part" and then you add Lua on top. And this is part of why Lua is such a compelling language now - by being extension-focused it's been able to iterate the entire language many times over and make basic semantic changes without worrying about backwards-compatibility.

But if I start writing an app and want something Lua-like....it ends up being easier to start in Python. There are some good projects out there to address this but it's a question of maturity - as of right now Lua still doesn't really satisfy as a "batteries-included" platform.

Re: Why nobody talks about Lua

#26

Post by baddox »

m0th87 wrote: post #5
samps wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that it's mostly being used for games. It's got incredible flexibility and power and even the mainline runtime (sans JIT) is surprisingly performant. More people should give it a try.

Python and Ruby largely continue the class-based object oriented model and are thus easy to pick up if you come from a C++/Java background. While JavaScript is prototype-based, and thus somewhat exotic, it at least maintains the syntactic heritage of C/C++, so it's not as scary as it otherwise might be for beginners. Plus most in the web development background have already known the language for years. Perhaps the re…

I am a novice programmer, but have used Lua for some basic (second- or third-year college programming level) projects, and I found the transition from the very mainstream languages (Java/PHP/Python) extremely easy. That said, I was doing fairly straight-forward imperative programming, so perhaps I never delved deep enough to see the "foreign" parts of Lua. To me, Lua seemed as easy a language to learn as one could hope for.

Re: Why nobody talks about Lua

#28

Post by silentbicycle »

chipsy wrote: post #24

I have trouble finding a use for Lua, even though I like it better as a language than most. The problem is that it isn't a good "starting place" for an app. Instead you write something in C/C++ and say "oh, I wish I had a dynamic language for this part" and then you add Lua on top. And this is part of why Lua is such a compelling language now - by being extension-focused it's been able to iterate the entire language…

> by being extension-focused it's been able to iterate the entire language many times over and make basic semantic changes without worrying about backwards-compatibility.

This is a very good point - Lua seems to have improved quite a bit since (say) 4.0 - it's small enough that maintaining an in-house fork of on old version is an option, so the language designers can make major changes when it's a clear improvement.

As library maturity goes, there are some really good ones out there (such as LPEG and LuaSocket), but for some things the documentation is a bit thin. The situation is getting better, though.

Re: Why nobody talks about Lua

#30

Post by silentbicycle »

iamwil wrote: post #11
m0th87 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python and Ruby largely continue the class-based object oriented model and are thus easy to pick up if you come from a C++/Java background. While JavaScript is prototype-based, and thus somewhat exotic, it at least maintains the syntactic heritage of C/C++, so it's not as scary as it otherwise might be for beginners. Plus most in the web development background have already known the language for years. Perhaps the re…

_why wrote a web server in lua, just for fun. It's available as a lua rock (like a ruby gem or python egg).

I don't see it on LuaRocks ATM, just the Kepler / Xavante stuff. What was it called?
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