Re: non random thoughts of a Lua n00b

["Frank Bechmann" <fbechmann@...>]

Eric Tetz <erictetz@gmail.com> schrieb am 29.12.04 02:02:41:
> 
> Frank Bechmann wrote:
> > Finding a path between these scylla and charybdis needs a clear
> > vision and a rigid enforcement of appropriate separation
> 
> Lua's authors have that in spades. More below...
> 

Sorry, I wasn't clear w/ this. Purpose of this introduction was to describe why and w/ which mindset I wrote this post but by no means I wanted to state that I'm missing "clear vision and a rigid enforcement" in this group, contrary is true.

> > [...] important points for me personally:
> 
> Many of those suggestions lie outside of the author's "clear
> vision" of Lua. They are things they expect the community to
> provide (if the community wants them), and they have maintained
> "rigid enforcement" of that separation for many years.

It would be far above *my* head to have "clear vision" of Lua after just a few days of engagement w/ it. But I as probably everyone else who's checking out a new language will search whether he can find it in the language's community. I think I more or less understand the technical and organisational reasons for the seperation of the functionality on the various layers and I admire the great work that all of you did w/ the Lua wiki, that helps to get the links between the parts connected. But nevertheless the points that I mentioned left me puzzled.

I'm not paying anything so I'm not a customer, but I'm at least a recipient of the work of the Lua community. And as such it might be my personal amusement to try to understand the technical and organisational reasons for the whyS of the functions on my checklist but first and foremost I have to understand there whereS and howS. 

> To really understand Lua's position in the programming universe, it
> helps to recognize that one of Lua's *primary* assets is it's
> implementation. Someone might choose Python because it's
> expressive, someone might choose Java because it can let you create
> cross-platform GUIs, someone might choose TCL because of the wealth
> of libraries written for it. Most of the reasons one would choose
> Lua are because of it's implementation -- the source is extremely
> portable, as small as possible, easy to read and hack, flexible and
> modular; it's easy to embed in a host, easy to extend in powerful
> ways, all while maintaining a small footprint and impressive speed.
> 
> The standard library is almost secondary. It's not designed to be
> inclusive (nor is the language itself, they both lack basic things
> like binary operators) -- it's designed to be minimal, cover a few
> basic things likely to be useful by the widest variety of hosts.
> But even then it's entirely optional, easily excluded.
> 
> If the community wants to make a stand-alone version, if they want
> to expand the library, make GUI toolkits for it, etc. -- the
> authors don't disapprove, they may even help, but only insofar as
> it doesn't conflict with Lua's *primary* design goal, which is to
> be a powerful yet minimal configuration and/or scripting language,
> easily embedded in and extended by larger host applications or
> used as the basis for a custom, domain specific language.

I got that now - but I'm not yet convinced. For sure you're not making a language for me - and as I said I was mainly looking for a language to create (smaller, ideally OS-independent) standalone applications in a scripting environment, e.g. stuff that I can use for daily work and maybe share w/ colleagues (and therewith growing) w/o having to install a complete language environment here and there. If you think that this might be niche worth to be addressed my thoughts might help, otherwise you can just forget it and concentrate on the goals you've mentioned.

Thx for your answer and best regards,
   Frank

__________________________________________________________
Mit WEB.DE FreePhone mit hoechster Qualitaet ab 0 Ct./Min.
weltweit telefonieren! http://freephone.web.de/?mc=021201