51–60 of 99 posts
This is very cool, the only way I can see this could be improved upon is by adding unit tests somehow (so that you can catch behavior changes when upgrading to a newer version of lua).
This is awesome. I will take [a single huge list of self-explanatory example snippets (with a few short comments here and there) for 95% of use cases] over [detailed walls-of-text docs pages spread across a hierarchy of topics] any day.
Along the same lines is http://hyperpolyglot.org/ (which has been posted here a few times). This is useful both for learning a new language and for a quick reference for languages you're not so hot on. It's also very interesting to compare similarities and how languages have influenced each other. It seems (from the comments here and my own experience) that many people really like this style of learning. It would be…
I was so happy with Lua and thought it was such an elegant and clean language.. then I looked at the side-by-side comparison between Lua and Io on the site you linked.. and now it seems clumsy and ugly.
Unfortunately a language is only as good as its implementation and tooling and Io's implementation is "experimental" at best (and development is pretty much dead) + the utter lack of tools and third-party support so I will have to stick with Lua.. and try very hard to forget Io again.
This is awesome. I will take [a single huge list of self-explanatory example snippets (with a few short comments here and there) for 95% of use cases] over [detailed walls-of-text docs pages spread across a hierarchy of topics] any day.
This method, however, is PERFECT for anyone who already knows how to program. I love it, and actually came here to say that I wish everything everywhere had a page like this on the web.
The brass tax, get down to business, of ANY topic in 15 minutes.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Anecdotes
This is awesome. I will take [a single huge list of self-explanatory example snippets (with a few short comments here and there) for 95% of use cases] over [detailed walls-of-text docs pages spread across a hierarchy of topics] any day.
I agree, but can't help but wonder if the "me" from 20 years ago would have found this very confusing while I was learning to program. I learned from books with all that long-winded banter - so now I'm not sure if I actually NEEDED all that stuff in order to learn. Guess I'll never know. This method, however, is PERFECT for anyone who already knows how to program. I love it, and actually came here to say that I wish…
Or the brass tacks, even:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/get-down-to-brass-tacks.h...
Sadly, English isn't as logical as Lua.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I see Lua in many ways as "JavaScript done right". I also found it considerably easier to integrate than something like V8, and it appears to be easier to use for non-programmers. It definitely deserves to be more popular.
Javascript being used by non programmers is 95% of the problems with javascript.. care to explain your problems with js and maybe expand on how lua is done right?
Well, I wasn't advocating Lua as a good language for non-programmers to write programs, but for scripting. When I make games/applications scriptable, it's closer to configurating than programming, and Lua's table constructors allow for great declarative DSLs.
This is awesome. On that note, I don't understand all the javascript craze. Lua has been around for quite some time, and it's small, with well-defined semantics, a nice set of features, the interpreter is small and very fast, you can get even faster with LuaJIT, etc. Browsers should have adopted that ages ago.
> On that note, I don't understand all the javascript craze. ... Browsers should have adopted that ages ago. Someone still has to actually do the work. Then it has to get adoption. No one has bothered to do either.
This is awesome. I will take [a single huge list of self-explanatory example snippets (with a few short comments here and there) for 95% of use cases] over [detailed walls-of-text docs pages spread across a hierarchy of topics] any day.