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On 9/30/2010 5:39 PM, Miles Bader wrote:
Thomas Lauer writes:Welcome to the wonderful world of the Lua mailing list. If you want to do something with Lua that is one iota off the received wisdom, prepare for a rough ride.You seem to be implying that this list is some sort of bastion of conservatism and rigid group-think, but that's simply not true. If anything, this list seems a font of creativity, with people constantly posting wacky and weird new ideas for changes in the language, which generally receive as much support as they do criticism.
2 cents, not directed at anyone. Disappointing that "bad cop" shtick is deemed so unwarranted. :-) I expect good ideas to prevail easily against some criticism. Should there be an expectation of "plain sailing"? Programming language syntax design is a very contentious area, everybody have their pet preferences -- that someone else will disagree with. Nothing much anyone can do to ease this.
Proposing stuff is like going out on a limb. We can and should poke the limb to see if it's sturdy. A most dangerous thing would be to assume or declare in an arbitrary fashion that we have a good limb. Then some issues are split along lines of Camp A and Camp B -- none of this actually stops anyone from implementing anything. Only it is pointed out that Camp B might decline features touted by Camp A. Can't see any solution to that.
Some things do prevail, it takes a bit of patience and a bit of merit. Eventually we got a bit library. Lua does not seem to be in the business of marketing "Grab version x+1!" every few months.
Let me reiterate that I am all for Nilson to demo his patches. Let the market decide on their merits, though that may have zero bearing with the canonical Lua. I do have reservations about his intentions and expectations, but I have already made those known and won't bore anyone further. If patches are good, I'm sure a speed bump or two is a minor nuisance. If patches sink into obscurity, I'm also sure there are good reasons for that.
Many have talked about making Lua the "next big thing". But anything angling for mass adoption need to assuage the fears of the developer masses of the unfamiliar; the corporate masses also like that. Lua would have a uphill task against those proclaiming orthodox career-supporting Java or C++ heritage in jostling for world domination. The pressures of mass adoption would greatly change the face of Lua into yet another sprawling mash-up and I haven't seen any signs of that happening.
-- Cheers, Kein-Hong Man (esq.) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia