Re: Recommendations on my upcoming Lua presentation?

[Fabio Kaminski <fabiokaminski@...>]

I think Axel has a good point here..�

its like if you was to show a new car model, and starting to showing that it has doors, but its not squared, its kind of rounded..�

and the �wheels are almost the same but has this little detail here..�

Instead i think the good things to point out are what make lua unique.. and start for why would you want try some..�

like.. it's high productivity.�

Computer benchmark game :�http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/, shows it very well in its graphics�for LOC in several algorithms..

about its dinamic and easy nature, and powerful embedding characteristics.. language efficiency, speed and memory awareness..�

and i think after that .. to have a look in how the code looks like.. and how it solve some algorithms and problems efficiently and effortlessly.. with tables and coroutines..�

and instead of debating about OOP-or-not.. show its multi-paradigm nature.. and what these features could represent in productivity for instance...

.. some functional features even?!..

sorry.. maybe too much work.. but just some thoughts..

���

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Axel Kittenberger <axkibe@gmail.com> wrote:

> LIFEBOAT
> �Hello world
> �Variable types
> �Simple String Handling
> � �#stringname
> � �string.format()
> � �string.sub()
> � �string.match()
> � �Mention but don't elaborate string.gsub() and "regex"
> �Console I/O
> �File I/O
> �Branching
> �Looping
> � �While
> � �Numeric for
> � �Generic for with pairs() and ipairs() only
> �OS Interface

I'd consider most of these things incredibly boring when having to
watch as presentation, at least for someone who know any programming
language this "while, for" things are just sad to hear yet another
time. For someone who didnt one presentation to introduce into coding
is far from enough. Its like dancing, you dont learn much about how to
do it, by looking at it. Ah okay, yet another "for loop" syntax, yet
looks slightly different than the dozend other of a dozend other
languages, who cares? Make a bit more complicated hello world with a
loop, some IO maybe and thats it to get a rough view how the language
looks feels like. Then as viewer I'd rather look up all the details
the moment I need to code them.

Instead how about to focus on what makes Lua different and get more
the overall picture instead of the "how do I open a file details",
when they really at it they can still google and find the online
version of PiL (for all these its good enough). More overall picture
would be: associative tables for everything, only one numeric type,
static weak typing, concat operator, the lua speciality of boolean
operators, first class functions for the intro. Metatables,
"pseudo"-OOP and the mention of register based VMs and LuaJIT and its
FFI dialect for the extra. Maybe you might want read up on Lua history
and mention it as well. What niche does Lua actually fill? For which
fields it doesnt?