Tutorials

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

> > Sean Middleditch wrote:
> No.  Game modders generalyl aren't coding newbies - they're newbies to
> the language itself tho.  A syntax more similar to what they may have
> picked up in gaming books, other game moding, or school 
> (which is almost
> always C/C++/Java), is more "newbie-friendly" in this case.


I have to say I agree with Sean. I think there is a shortage of literature
and introductory material wrt Lua. I came to Lua via Python so I was
familiar with most of the concepts of a reference driven, variant object
based scripting language. Even so it still took a while to pick up some of
the quirks of Lua. For anything but the most basic of tasks the manual is an
inadequate learning resource and a lot of the resources on the Wiki are
pretty advanced. Python has a very good tutorial and I think we should
create something similar for Lua on the Wiki. I think at lot of people pass
on Lua because they give it half an hour or so and then just pass on to any
number of the C based or better documented languages available (of which
there are a lot!). If Lua is to gain a greater prescence I think it needs to
make life easier for beginners.

Actually this falls into two camps. Scripters and embedders. There are a
number of newbies who have requested resources for information on how to use
Lua with their application (the 2 Brians recently). There was minimal
information on how extended and embed Python when I started it. There was
also minimal documentation in Lua, but Lua turned out to be easier to use so
I stuck with it. The point is unless Lua is better documented how are people
supposed to realise it is easier. 

As has been pointed out many games programmers follow the path of least
resistance and if it takes a week to learn a language most games programmers
will think "well I could write a language in that time",  irrespective of
the fact that it will take a month and lots of late nights ;-). Well we're a
dogmatic breed but we live and learn! A more gentle learning curve might
coax more people into using Lua.

Regards,
Nick