Re: Suitability of Lua as a First Programming Language?

[Robert Raschke <rtrlists@...>]

This is getting very off topic.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 11:24 AM, John Hind <john.hind@zen.co.uk> wrote:

I was also very impressed at first by the elegance, efficiency and minimalism of Forth, but quickly fell out of love when I actually had to do something non-trivial with it. I suspect its enthusiasts have never tried to deliver anything requiring more than a page of code or anything requiring long-term maintenance.

But I can't let this stand as it is. Forth is in use at NASA for various space related missions (http://forth.gsfc.nasa.gov/). It is also in use as construction planning SW (http://www.mpeltd.demon.co.uk/forth.htm, half way down the page). And there's an airport baggage handling system written in Forth (it's one that works, and therefore not in the news), but I can't find references online at the moment.

None of these will be one-pagers. Forth requires large amounts of discipline and is usually used to essentially build a DSL from the ground up.

Alright, back to Lua ...

Robby