Suitability of Lua as a First Programming Language?

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

Hi all,

David M and myself were discussing the second question of the FAQ:

http://batbytes.com/luafaq/#T1.2

He thought that Lua is not that commonly used as a general purpose
language, but rather as an embedded scripting language.  This is
probably true.

But the question du jour is more whether Lua can be used as a good
introduction to programming, not necessarily as a 'trade skill'.  In
the same way, CS departments have variously used Pascal or Scheme for
this purpose.  Although Pascal was a rather frustrating language at
the time (Brian Kernighan has an interesting essay on the subject) it
was very good when I was a recovering FORTRAN programmer. (And Scheme
is definitely not a 'trade skill')

So, in other words, does it teach the basic concepts well?  Your
answers will help #T1.2 have a less idiosyncratic answer ;)

steve d.