Re: Propsoal: a lua dialect without nil

[Dirk Laurie <dpl@...>]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 02:12:19AM +0200, Miles Bader wrote:
> 
> Pro:  One less subject for long flamey threads on this list
> 
> Con:  language becomes more complex, harder to learn, and less concise:
> Con:  more annoying to program in:  
> Con:  less efficient: 

Absolutely.  Very well summarized.

The one thing I can't understand about threads like:
    -- nil is confusing, replace it by something else
    -- implicit conversion is evil, get rid of it
    -- table as only data stucture is inadequate, let's have some more
    -- index origin 1 is silly, it should be 0
is that such debates generate so much traffic, and respawn every now 
and then, despite being so utterly futile.  The Lua team is never going 
to change any of those.  

These debates remind me of a group of old men in a pub discussing what 
tactics their favourite football team should be employing.  Except that
what we do is more like suggesting that football would be a better game 
if some of the rules were changed.

Fortunately there are still many cases of what should be our
core business:
    -- helpful answers to questions from not only newbies
    -- descriptions of neat and well-documented little modules that 
        you can compile to a .so or .dll and access using “require”
    -- announcements of major Lua-related packages
    -- reports of bugs and bugoids

Dirk