Non-stop complaining...

["Joshua Jensen" <jjensen@...>]

I'm going to keep this reasonably short.  I am thoroughly disappointed
at the sheer amount of complaining going on about Lua.  The Lua authors
have spent considerable amounts of time designing the language, and what
they seem to get in return is a barrage of whining.  Especially lately,
the negative noise level has been so high that I had to redirect all Lua
messages to another email folder.

Enough already.  Constructive conversations are useful.  Suggestions are
useful.  Reiterating the same suggestion over and over because you're
not agreed with is not (and I've been there).  "I don't like this about
Lua because it isn't like language 'x'" is not useful either.

Simply put, if you don't like it, don't use it.  There are other
languages fitting your requirements.  Or write your own.  Heck, use Lua
4 instead of Lua 5.

Lua is a great language.  It has quirks, but they're minimal.  Reading
the list lately, a casual observer might think Lua was the worst thing
out there.  That simply isn't true.

And on a very personal note, the conversations I think clog the list
are:

* GUI toolkits
* LuaCheia (thank heavens this has quieted down)
* OOP/non-OOP concepts
* Syntax issues (does it REALLY matter what a comment looks like?)

Conversations I think are useful:

* Garbage collection strategies
* Making the C API easier to use
* Lua's data description capabilities
* Coroutines
* Performance
* Bugs in the core

Just my opinion,
Josh