Re: Non-stop complaining...

["Peter Hill" <corwin@...>]

Joshua Jensen:
> 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.

'Whining'? Nobody here has said (afaik) "I hate this language, why don't we
all use Python / Perl / etc instead". Perhaps what you see as whining,
others may see as constructively drawing attention to various
issues?

Lua is an excellent language and the effort of the authors is greatly
appreciated... at least by me (and, I would assume, by most people on this
list).

Presumably this list (plus the Wiki) is the correct (only?) forum to make
suggestions & requests regarding Lua. And while it is true that Lua5.0 is
now in the final stages of beta testing, that does not prevent the authors
from taking note of ideas for future versions, nor prevent the Lua community
discussing the pros & cons of such.

Furthermore a variety of apparent 'complaints' have actually related to a
poor understanding of certain new features, due largely to deficiencies in
the documentation which is *also* still beta. Answering these concerns will,
hopefully, help clarify the documentation (and these issues) for the final
release.


> Especially lately, the negative noise level has been so high that I had to
> redirect all Lua messages to another email folder.

I think you may have misinterpretted the nature of this. There was a high
level of suggestions because of the birth of a new project (LuaCheia)...
which now has a mailing list all of its own (and hence the return of quiet).


> Reiterating the same suggestion over and over because you're not agreed
> with is not (and I've been there).

I don't remember seeing anything like that...

>  "I don't like this about Lua because it isn't like language 'x'" is not
> useful either.

Or that...


> Simply put, if you don't like it, don't use it.  There are other
> languages fitting your requirements.  Or write your own.

If everyone felt like that then Lua5 would never have been born :-(.

Lua5 seems to have some 'controversial' features but that is mostly an
illusion arising from those features being (currently) under documented in
their nature, purpose, and reason for being different from Lua4 (which is
rather successful). However I'm sure the final official release will be met
with great cheers!

> Lua is a great language.

Absolutely!

> It has quirks, but they're minimal.

No... it does have quirks but I wouldn't say they are minimal. However that
doesn't make the language unusable, or bad, or even not great... but it does
leave the way open for some more fine-tuning.

> Reading the list lately, a casual observer might think Lua was the worst
> thing out there.  That simply isn't true.

Does that mean there should be a separate 'casual user' (public relations?)
list where people who don't won't to hear bad things can go?

This list is not, I presume, just meant to be a sales brochure for the
language (the web page can do that :-) but rather a place where members of
the Lua community can put forward problems they are having... or present
various suggestions & ideas for the continuing improvement of the Lua system
(even if those ideas are sometimes absurd).


> And on a very personal note, the conversations I think clog the list
> are:
>
> * GUI toolkits
> * LuaCheia (thank heavens this has quieted down)

Both related to the birth of LuaCheia (now on its own list).

> * OOP/non-OOP concepts

I haven't seen any of these lately (unless you count my comment about
"filehandle:read" which was really more about consistency in the Lua core
that OO).

> * Syntax issues (does it REALLY matter what a comment looks like?)

If you mean the "#" issue then that was actually not about comments at all
but rather about OS file wrapping. And since the authors have been pondering
the situation I presume that input was welcome.


> Conversations I think are useful:
> * Garbage collection strategies

You'd think so... but since a comment made some time back (commenting on a
flaw in the GC of weakly keyed/valued tables) by another list member was
apparently (or so I'm told) met with total silence it would seem that people
aren't interested in GC after all. :-(

Anyway, it has been stated that Lua5.1 is aiming for incremental GC so I
expect there to be some lively debate once Lua5.0 is safely settled in as
the official release version.

> * Making the C API easier to use
> * Lua's data description capabilities

Sounds good. Suggestions?

> * Coroutines

- They're nice (although a bit less general that those in languages like
Modular2, which can yield to anyone, not just their original caller).
- They're useful.
- They seem to work fine.
- They don't work across C calls (you need to modify the Lua source to
achieve that, which has been done if it is needed).
- Anything more to add? Hmm... perhaps a few examples showing them in real
use might be nice. :-)

> * Performance

I wouldn't mind seeing someone in the know write an article about
performance issues as an  appendix to the manual (or for the Wiki) so that
programmers can get a good feel for where the various efficiencies &
inefficiencies lie.

> * Bugs in the core

Always useful to know. Haven't heard of any lately.


Cheers,
Peter Hill.