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On Saturday, January 1, 2011, Sean Conner <sean@conman.org> wrote:
> It was thus said that the Great Chris Babcock once stated:
>> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 11:03 AM, kevin beckford <chiggsy@lazyweb.ca> wrote:
>> > You do not need standard libraries like Python, you need a "Lua
>> > Cookbook" like Perl's "Perl Cookbook", and even then "Programming in
>> > Lua" is quite helpful with that sort of thing.
>> >
>> > "Do-it-yourself": Good for learning, but automation and abstraction
>> > are always welcome.
>>
>> I've scripted an SMTP dialog before... There are some things you do
>> not want to learn. :)
>
> I never fond SMTP to be that difficult myself (this from someone who has
> hacked sendmail.cf, so your milage may vary).
I prefer Postfix, myself, but the problem isn't whether SMTP is or isn't difficult, but whether everyone who uses it in Lua is going to have their own buggy half implementation.
>> Something like a standard library is necessary for a cookbook. You
>> can't create a recipe for "How-to use Lua with Protocol X" without
>> either a recognized abstraction layer for Protocol X or so much domain
>> specific knowledge that the cookbook becomes a ten volume set.
>>
>> I honestly don't understand the resistance to a standard library.
>
> Where do you stop? At the minimal end, you have Lua (where we are now).
> At the other end you have Perl + all of CPAN (or maybe Java now that I think
> about it). And what's useful *now* doesn't mean it's useful *later*---just
> look at Common Lisp. Huge function set, but lacks a lot of functionality
> that's now considered *standard* like threads, sockets and XML/JSON support,
> but didn't even exist (or wasn't in widespread use) when the standard was
> created.
You stop where the will to maintain it stops. Just don't sap that will by joining the "how can we do this" discussion with the "why do you want to" argument. I understand that's not your use case for the language. If the discussion dies on its own then I need to choose between spending more time on development or more money on hardware. If there's a product from this discussion then you'll have to ignore questions about the standard library. (Which, I'll say again, I think is a misnomer for our purposes.)
>> This
>> is a requirement for Lua to be competitive as a mainstream language,
>
> Is Lua a mainstream language? Do the creators consider Lua a mainstream
> language? Is that even a goal for Lua?
This isn't constitutional law. The street finds its own uses. I may or may not be able to make a case on the basis of what code they've published, but I think I'll wait until they're gone before I risk speaking to their intentions.
>> Those who want a standard library are generally talking about
>> comparatively high level code that isn't going to have much impact on
>> those applications or even compete much with them for developer time.
>
> The one syslog interface in Lua I found didn't offer the appropriate
> functionality I wanted (for instance, hard coded paramters to the C function
> openlog(); took only numeric constants for the levels instead of a string,
> etc). The getopt functions I found were also lacking. That's another issue
> with a "standard" library---they require *very* careful planning or they're
> annoying to use.
I don't think it has to be quite that top down.
>> I think the problem is that the Lua maintainers are too successful at
>> maintaining the illusion that the feature set of Lua is responsive to
>> democratic process. There's an irrational fear that the 'ballot box'
>> will be stuffed with feature requests from former Pythonistas who,
>> like a plague of Calfornians, bring with them the causes of the taxes
>> they are fleeing. We need to get past that somehow.
>
> Anybody that uses Microsoft Word on average uses only 20% of the features.
> The problem is---that 20% is different from person to person, and thus, you
> end up with a bloated application.
>
> I like Lua *precicely* becuase it doesn't have a bloated standard library,
> and for features that are missing, I've been able to find bindings or create
> my own.
>
> -spc
Except to use Microsoft Word, you have to have the whole thing. There's no reason to do that here.
Chris