Book on Lua [RE: Tutorials]

[Asko Kauppi <Asko.Kauppi@...>]

I have found the quality of Lua documentation to be adequate, even
surprisingly good. For example, the "Roberto's book" pdf file (dated "Dec
27th 2000") is superbly written and for me, almost ready for print!

However, for the documentation part Lua seems to be a moving train. What I'd
like to have is a nice, _real_ book on Lua 4.0 but it's unlikely that the
authors will come up with that. They're already in 5.0.

While this is good for the "cutting edge" people, it certainly is not good
for newcomers to pick things up. "Tag methods... what are they?" Not in the
latest version...? Very confusing, and therefore not good P.R. for the
language.

My goal is to gently push / recommend for Lua within our organization.
Having a solid, preprinted book on the subject would help on that. Roberto
said he's working on it. Still.

- asko

--
Asko Kauppi
Flextronics Design Finland
Box 23, 39201 Kyröskoski, Finland
www.flextronics.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Nick Trout [SMTP:Nick.Trout@warthog.co.uk]
> Sent:	Monday, June 10, 2002 1:37 PM
> To:	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject:	Tutorials
> 
> 
> > > 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
> 
> 
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