21–30 of 96 posts
I've never heard of Lua, but now that I am looking at it, it seems very friendly. Love how they call things what they are, for example `local` is just a local variable, or `repeat X until Y` for a loop. It's a joy to see, to be honest.
1-index kept throwing me off though
I've never heard of Lua, but now that I am looking at it, it seems very friendly. Love how they call things what they are, for example `local` is just a local variable, or `repeat X until Y` for a loop. It's a joy to see, to be honest.
I was first introduced to Lua via World of Warcraft. It's the scripting language used for Interface Customization. https://www.wowhead.com/guide=5338/comprehensive-beginners-g...
SQL, Lua, C++, and HTML all around 2006 to host private World of WarCraft servers.
Great talking point at my previous interviews.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1-index kept throwing me off though
The main problem with that decision is that every discussion having anything to do with Lua always devolves into repetitive bikeshedding about the 1-indexing.
Sure it may not be the most critical point about language design, but it's not just bikeshedding either. For one thing, it is a language semantics issue rather than plainly syntax issue.
I still like Lua, and maybe you don't even agree with Dijkstra's argument, which is also possible to make, but doesn't mean its bikeshedding - which seems to be a totally overused term to basically mean any argument I don't want to have.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main problem with that decision is that every discussion having anything to do with Lua always devolves into repetitive bikeshedding about the 1-indexing.
In the context of language design, the arguments for 0-based indexing rise above bikeshedding. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E... Sure it may not be the most critical point about language design, but it's not just bikeshedding either. For one thing, it is a language semantics issue rather than plainly syntax issue. I still like Lua, and maybe you don't even agree with Dijkstra's argument,…
Just kidding, I actually agree with your point that the term is just demonstrate that you don’t want to have a conversation by diminishing the value of anybody having it.
I've never heard of Lua, but now that I am looking at it, it seems very friendly. Love how they call things what they are, for example `local` is just a local variable, or `repeat X until Y` for a loop. It's a joy to see, to be honest.
Check out (the now unfortunately named) CoronaSDK from (the also unfortunately named) Corona Labs. It's all Lua based and is now entirely MIT open sourced. One of the easiest to code cross platform development languages there is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. Particularly when parsing strings, it's useful if the upper bound of one substring is the lower bound of a nonoverlapping substring immediately after. For example, here's a routine to split a string into the part before the first dot and the part after: function split_dot(s) local idx = s:find(".", 1, true) if not idx then return s end return s:sub(1,idx-1), s:sub(idx+1) end It may come as a surprise that…
You wouldn't end up with this: s:sub(0, #s) You would end up with: s:sub(0, #s - 1) Which demonstrates the off-by-one error.
In python, for example, the operation of copying a list can be correctly written l[0:len(l)]. You're more likely to see l[::] or list(l) though.
Edit: I think maybe the proposed error that's being avoided is "a user tries to use a closed interval when sub takes a half-open interval." It seems like the opposite error is similarly likely though. Some areas where it's nice to have half-open intervals like using a modulus to restrict a value to an interval or parsing strings don't have such a symmetry.
Notably if you're making a binary heap the formulas come out much nicer with 1-indexing than with 0-indexing, but I haven't met any other examples where this is the case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1-index kept throwing me off though
The main problem with that decision is that every discussion having anything to do with Lua always devolves into repetitive bikeshedding about the 1-indexing.
I've never heard of Lua, but now that I am looking at it, it seems very friendly. Love how they call things what they are, for example `local` is just a local variable, or `repeat X until Y` for a loop. It's a joy to see, to be honest.
Check out (the now unfortunately named) CoronaSDK from (the also unfortunately named) Corona Labs. It's all Lua based and is now entirely MIT open sourced. One of the easiest to code cross platform development languages there is.
I've never heard of Lua, but now that I am looking at it, it seems very friendly. Love how they call things what they are, for example `local` is just a local variable, or `repeat X until Y` for a loop. It's a joy to see, to be honest.
1-index kept throwing me off though
For those interested, a very quick and easy way to start making games in Lua is with Roblox Studio. https://www.roblox.com/create
As you mention, Roblox is actually a huge platform for creating games in Lua, and helping other players discover them. Not only do you get a cross-platform game engine with multiplayer built in, it also seems to be quite pleasant to develop for.
For instance, you can create both client-side and server-side Lua in the same IDE, and spin up a local server with a client that connects to it in a single click with no configuration. You can also add breakpoints and step through both sides in the debugger. Pretty awesome as I was used to client-side JavaScript and server-side Python before.
Because the platform encourages experimentation, I think we'll see many new game ideas and probably even new genres emerging from Roblox.