Re: Recommendations on my upcoming Lua presentation?

[Steve Litt <slitt@...>]

On Tuesday 01 February 2011 16:03:24 Fabio Kaminski wrote:
> 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..

I don't know whether it's too much work or not, but at the very least I'll 
make the first slide a list of Lua's unique advantages, and vocally I'll try 
to get the desire level up. Thanks to you and Axel for the idea.

Hmmm, my initial thought on its unique avantages would include:

* Quick and easy to learn
* Sensible, easy to remember syntax
* Multi-paradigm nature (but not loosey goosey like Perl)
* Functions as data (what you guys call "first class functions")
* Lua's the perfect environment in which to learn new paradigms
* Extensible
* Lua's a library embeddable in C
* Easy callbacks
* Closures
* Very rapid prototyping
* Small footprint and fast
* LuaJIT 2.0

At this point I'm not sold on coroutines being as important as the preceding, 
and time considerations suggest not getting into Metatables.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
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