Re: [ANN] Idle Script - pre-alpha release

[KHMan <keinhong@...>]

Vijay Aswadhati wrote:
> On Friday, July 13, 2007 6:08 AM, Thomas Lauer wrote:
>> Stefan Sandberg <keffo.sandberg@gmail.com> wrote:
>> [snip]
>> So let's just agree to disagree.
> 
> Someday I may regret this but from all the responses I have seen
> from the creator of Idle, my subtext parsing engine is telling me
> that 'Idle' wants to be a fork!
> 
> And that is Ok by me (not that Idle needs my approval):
> - as long as we call a spade a spade
> - Idle is compliant with the license of Lua
> 
> I understand the pressures of developing a product. Patching Lua and
> keeping my main development trunk as a set of patches to be merged
> into the official Lua core to 'make' my product doesn't make sense
> to me.
> 
> I saw this one coming for a long time.
> 
> I second it: Let's just agree to disagree.

I'll second your sentiments, I agree completely with Vijay. It seems like practically everybody is jumping onto the scripting language bandwagon. Everybody wants to create and lead a new, hot, spiffy, scripting language. Lots of people are taking Lua as a starting point for this purpose. Everybody wants to be the next Guido. :-)

Scripting languages with a strong marketing push from their creators are cheaper than a dime a dozen these days. But there's only so much the market can take.

I'll wish the creator of Idle good luck all the same, but honestly speaking, I don't think he will achieve widespread adoption. While Lua is an incredibly practical language, it's not fashionable... Of course, on this list we all know it works and it's great, but it's hard to market Lua to a market enamoured with languages like Ruby and Python. Fashion does not always reward engineering excellence.

If the creator of Idle wants to be successful, I do believe he will need a strong Reality Distortion Field. I'm serious, because the language must be Larger Than Life. As for me, I'd rather support Lua and help build Lua's community.

-- 
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia