Re: Python and Lua

["Nick Trout" <nick@...>]

Thanks to Michael for the Dylan review. Think I'll steer clear of Dylan for the
time being! Too many macros scare me, I like to see nice explicit code in front
of me. I suppose its for the same reason I havent got round to studying the C++
STL yet. How do you debug templates?!


> I found that reading the paper "Lua-an extensible extension language" on the
> documentation page of the Lua web site gave me good insight into what Lua is
> all about.  It has perspective that you can't get from just reading the
> manual or staring at code.

I agree! Very insightful. 5 good bullet points in the intro.

> I may be mistaken, but I think the source of the "3rd-party" library problem
> is that Lua is a lightweight language.  Like Scheme it doesn't come with a
> module system, object system, etc. but is expressive enough to implement
> those features if you need them.  The problem is that everyone will
> implement them differently, so that any code based on such an extension
> cannot be easily used by others.

Ahhh but that is exactly what I am interested in seeing!! I would like to see
lots of implementations of peoples ideas, applicable or not! A Life program is
completely useless to most people but it shows a coding style and ideas. That's
what make Open Source such a great thing. You have the ability browse and choose
the most suitable bit of code to butcher. Hope everybody's been to
www.sourceforge.net (Home of 10,000 incomplete RPG's  ;-D )

> > I admit this is an area where I'm jealous of Python!  It has a very nice
> > collection of libraries for image manipulation, ftp, www, tkinter, etc.  I
> > think many people decide to use Python because of the libraries.
> > So, why do those libraries exist for Python but not for Lua?

I'm not sure they need to exist. I agree with the "Lua is an embedded language
and should stay that way" train of thought. The whole idea is that you just
expose parts for the hosts libraries to allow customisation of the host
application. And if you need libraries tolua is great. (There's a SWIG binder as
well now bit havent tried that.). If I wanted to script something using all
those libraries I would just use Python, why reinvent the wheel?

And why has the Python user base grown so rapidly? Because its easy, they have a
very friendly, generous and collaborative development community and there's
absolutely loads of Python scripts all over the web. But, Python has different
goals its scripting language etc.

Right I'm off for Easter now, going to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix,
wahay!
Cheers,
Nick.