Re: The World According to Lua: How To?

[Glenn Maynard <glenn@...>]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2005 at 11:11:28PM +0100, PA wrote:
> >I'm not saying one can't; I'm saying one normally does not.  Lua is an
> >extension language; extending is what it's good at.  If you're writing
> >a whole application in it, you'll quickly find out what the difference
> >is--it's not good at it, and isn't supposed to be.
> 
> Perhaps... time will tell... 

Huh?  Lua is specifically designed to be a good extension language, and
not at all designed to be an application language.  The good uses of a
language come from its design; you don't design a language and then go
figure out what it's good at.  "Time will tell" whether Lua is successful
at what it's meant to be good at (rather, has told: it's quite good at it),
but I don't think there's ever been a question of it being a good application
language.

(Of course, I'm getting that from having read the manual and PiL, having
used the language, and from my personal experience of what properties a
language must have to be good at handling large applications--it's very
clear that Lua doesn't have them, and isn't intended to.  That's probably
part of why it's so good at being an extension language--they didn't try
to make it do everything.)

-- 
Glenn Maynard