lua-users home
lua-l archive

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]


I find one of the benefits of Lua's syntax is that it strikes a good
balance between "easy to read/scan" and "highest possible information
content".

I often find that reading/writing J/Haskell/SML ("as much information
in as little space as possible") I have to very consciously slow down
my reading and comprehension speed to that of reading maths.  That is
fine when I'm dealing with abstractions on the level of math.

But I find that this terseness grates when trying to write a program
that does something reasonably mundane.  The kind where first this
needs to be done, and then that, and so on.  Having the wordy syntax
of Lua makes writing and reading this more enjoyable.

I guess, very often I find that "I didn't have time to write something
shorter".

One of the few constructs I really like, that exist in a lot of more
terse languages, are list comprehensions.  But I'm not sure how those
could fit into the spirit of Lua.

Robby

--
Some programmers when faced with a problem think, "I know, I'll use a
regular expression." Now they have two problems.