Re: Lua impressions from a scheme/f# programmer [was: Linking Lua in F#]

[Steve Litt <slitt@...>]

On Monday, July 18, 2011 08:10:04 PM David Manura wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 6:46 PM, J. A. "Biep" Durieux 
<rrrs@biep.org> wrote:
> > P.S.: Being the pedantic person that I am, I often write down the
> > thoughts I have regarding the software I use.  I attach my Lua
> > thoughts for your enjoyment..
> 
> This is worth a discussion thread in its own right, so I'm forking
> it.

Say whaaaaaat?

It's fascinating to see the difference between other peoples' 
priorities and mine. With the possible exception of "More metatable 
functionality", nothing listed in that text file would improve my life 
with Lua.

I'll tell you my priorities:

1) Keep tables just the way they are. They're tremendous algorithm 
enablers.

2) Keep closures. They make everything soooo easy.

3) Continue to make callback function syntax simple like it is right 
now. I don't even try callbacks in other languages -- the syntax just 
gets too hairy.

4) Find a way to encourage/document/qc third party interfaces and 
frameworks. When bragging about Lua, the ONLY thing I can't brag about 
is the lack of a Rails substitute, lack of stuff typically supplied by 
CPAN and/or Ruby gems. I understand this is not the business of the 
core Lua developers, but we in the community should find a way of doing 
it. Having add-on software would change Lua from a language loved by 
its users to a language everyone wants to use, without adding one new 
feature to the language. This is a big priority to me.

5) Enable a simple, C like continue statement. No gotos, no labels, no 
choices of where it continues at, just a way to go to the top of the 
loop and continue. My view is it's no more non-modular than break. 
This is a small priority to me, although certainly bigger than those 
mentioned in the original file. This is not a big deal -- I already 
developed a general purpose iterator that renders it unnecessary, but 
it *would* be a nice addition -- just saying. 

6)  Enable the equivalent of C's ++, += and *=. Makes for less verbose 
coding. Small priority, I could easily code up mynumber:increment(n) 
and mynumber:multby(). Just saying...

7) Use Python's space delimited blocks instead of end. I like the way 
Python does it. But seeing as nobody else does, I'll shut up. Vim has 
excellent syntax highlighting, making this a trivial point.

Except for #4, I find Lua to be head and shoulders above all other 
languages for ease of programming, ease of debugging, logical 
consistency, etc. I can't begin to tell you how much I love the "all 
complex data are tables" feature of Lua. Except for #4, if Lua never 
got another feature I'd love it forever.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/key_excellence.htm
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt