Re: Lua on Reddit again

[Miles Bader <miles@...>]

Dirk Laurie <dpl@sun.ac.za> writes:
>> Popularity is typically the result of being in the right place, at the
>> right time, and not completely dropping the ball.  It's usually a waste
>> of time to try and find much more meaning than that in it.
>> [That doesn't stop people from trying, of course...]
>> 
> I don't know where this notion that Lua is not popular comes from,
> except maybe that since it is so easily embeddable, you don't always
> know that it has been used.

I mean something like "mindshare" not "usage."

I wouldn't call Lua "unpopular", but I also wouldn't really call it
popular in the sense that Python is.

If you announce on a random project mailing list "hey we need a
scripting language to allow some simple user extensions, what should we
use?" it's pretty much guaranteed that a large portion of the answers
will be "python!"  ... not because it's particularly well suited to the
role, but because "everybody else uses it."

I think a good case can often be made for Lua in such applications, but
still, Python is likely to be the default choice these days.

> E.g. unlike Python, the lua interpreter
> is not part of the default Ubuntu installation, yet didn't someone
> point out recently that the grub boot loader has some Lua in it?
>
> Heck, if a language is useed every time someone boots Ubuntu, doesn't 
> that count as popular?

Supposedly Lua has been removed from the grub core.... hmm:
"As of 2009-09-26 Lua is not anymore in official GRUB. It has moved to grub-extras now."
(http://grub.enbug.org/LUASupport)

-Miles

-- 
97% of everything is grunge