Re: Lua's opportunity

["Andrew Wilson" <agrwagrw@...>]

The Lua team seems to have chosen to make a PHP competitor called
Kepler, build around lua and lua modules because that is the most
effective way to popularize Lua. And move Lua into the future-web
programming. Seeing how fast Ruby has become popular because of Ruby on
Rails, maybe Kepler will propel Lua in a similar way. 

I believe a standalone command line interface version of lua hasn't
really been the Lua team's focus. But I believe that for many
programmers a lighter, simpler, faster alternative to Python, Perl,
Ruby, TCL would be useful. So core libraries tuned to specific
functionality like IUP for GUI's and LuaFileSystem for file/directory
access would also propel Lua forward . I believe with a good set of
core libraries and a standard Lua install packages for Windows, Linus
&  Mac,and more beginner documentation that Lua would be more
popular. Right now to use Lua means a manual setup of directories and
environment variables, manual copy of lua binaries, picking modules to
install one by one, visiting many web sites, reading this email list,
and reading Programming in Lua book, the Lua Reference manual as well
as online tutorials. 

For me, a reduced learning curve is the path to maximum productivity.
As for a swiss-army knife language, I think lua is pretty close. Lua
has scattered sets of information,bringing those sets together in a
single install would make Lua better. Now that modules exist, a
standard install package can be put together for Lua. But what should
be in the "standard package", who is going to do it? And maybe more
importantly how is that work to be organized? 

Andrew
Boston