general newbie question about lua

[Onay Urfalioglu <urfaliog@...>]

Hi everyone!

I am an experienced c++ programmer of scientific apps/libs. Recently, i was 
looking for a next generation programming language (next gen = dynamically 
typed, ease of use, rapid prototyping, ...) and found lua...

Before i decide to jump in, i would like to ask you guys some questions:

- Is lua with a lua-jit available a suitable language to develop scientific 
things?

- Is the lua community interested in open source lua scientific apps at all, 
so i 
can be somehow sure of a reasonable 'big' community regarding my interests?

- I need to use 64-bit (x86-64) linux. Lua-jit is only 32 bit and i cannot 
find linux binaries of it... Is a 64-bit version planned and when can one 
expect it?

- Is Lua "becoming" a 'serious' language on its own, like Python or Ruby? I 
mean, not just to extend other software...   
Can one expect a nice IDE rising soon? Maybe wxLua - Editor?
Is the community growing? 

- what about 'really generic libraries' in Lua: As an example: consider a 
matrix library like BLAS in fortran or C, where bindings to Lua are available 
(i know of one for x86). But the only data type the matrix can hold is 
floating point. But a real generic lib should allow 'any' type...

Is it interesting to develop such libs in plain Lua? I would probably need to 
write such one in Lua....

I think bindings are ok, but i am looking for a language to write also 
libraries in by utilizing its flexibility.

Thx in advance
oni