Re: Lua and Neko comparison

[Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@...>]

Chris Marrin wrote:
> Given that there are millions of web pages in existance and Javascript 
> is used on a large percentage of them (certainly much larger than ANY 
> other language :-) I would have to call it a 600lb gorilla, if you're 
> talking about scripting languages.

Most of this code is copy/paste, that doesn't mean there are so many 
people able to program it, beside stopping the right-click.

> And if Lua syntax were "Javascript 
> compatible" that would go a long way toward making an argument for it. 
> As it is, using 'and' rather than '&&', '~=' rather than '!=' and '--' 
> rather than '//' are just showstoppers.

Wow, it doesn't take you much to be stopped (no you, but other people in 
your company)...
It is the sign of some rigid minds, sticking to minor details rather 
than overall principles.

It reminds me of the PoLS principle loved by Ruby fans: principle of 
least surprise. Meaning "let's adhere to C (or Perl) syntax and names as 
much as possible to ease the learning". That suppose most people 
learning Ruby have already a C/Perl(/PHP/Java/JavaScript/etc.) culture.
Likely, given the popularity of these languages, but restrictive. What 
about Pascal, Basic, not to mention Lisp or non-programmers?

I found more difficult to adapt to some of the functional programming 
principles behind Lua, and I still don't use weak tables, coroutines, 
etc., that to learn the easy and descriptive syntax.

--
Philippe Lhoste
--  (near) Paris -- France
--  http://Phi.Lho.free.fr
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