Re: Suitability of Lua as a First Programming Language?

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

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Mark Hamburg <mark@grubmah.com> wrote:
> Lua has most of the good parts (Crockford's term) of JavaScript without most
> of the bad parts.

Peter Norvig's essay [1] on "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years"
has a appendix on 'Language Choice'. He comes up with (1) Use your
friends (2) Keep it Simple (3) Play (i.e. insist on an interactive
mode).  The actual choice is not that important, initially.

He quotes Alan Perlis: "A language that doesn't affect the way you
think about programming, is not worth knowing"

Lua is definitely more fun and interactive than JavaScript.  And it
definitely is good for recovering C++ junkies.

steve d.

[1] http://norvig.com/21-days.html