Re: Suitability of Lua as a First Programming Language?

[Mark Hamburg <mark@...>]

On Sep 26, 2009, at 10:18 AM, Casey Hawthorne wrote:

> I'm a fan of students learning both functional and imperative
> programming in a first course.
>
> If Lua has functional aspects, then I think it would be a good choice
> as a first programming language.
>
> I'm thinking along the lines of JavaScript, which has functional
> aspects and a lot of bad constructs as well.
>
> So, if Lua or some other language could be a cleaned up JavaScript
> that also runs outside the browser, that would be superb.

Lua has most of the good parts (Crockford's term) of JavaScript  
without most of the bad parts.

It has a few controversial items such as counting from 1 rather than 0  
but that doesn't matter in a first programming language and probably  
makes more sense to people without a programming background. (Even a  
lot of mathematical material numbers sequences from 1 rather than 0.)

I've been wondering whether Corona (http://anscamobile.com/corona/)  
would be a good way to do introductory game programming and it's Lua  
based.

Mark