A few months ago I started a
thread "panda bears will die, sloths will live on". I really
regret it. I upset some people, people I respect.
Having said this, I meant well and I think some of the issues I
failed to articulate are still valid today.
I think that list members are often pushing the Lua team in
directions they probably should not go in. For instance, I was
pushing for an easier way to split code into separate files and
was comparing Lua to Python and PHP, I wasn't worried if Lua got a
bit bigger.
Now I am not doing desktop work with Lua and am more interested in
the embedded side and I want Lua to be smaller. I am impossible to
please and as a whole so is the list.
I have a suggestion.... why not divide the language into sizes?
For instance lets say standard, vanilla, PUC Lua was size 3. Size
2 could be the same Lua shipping with long int's and size 1 could
be Lua shipping with plain int, or something like this, others
would be better qualified to sort this.
Now this is not very interesting but what about Lua size 4, the
community edition? Why not make a bigger, slower, more feature
rich Lua that the general community could develop.
Perhaps this would end, the endless discussions about what is
missing or wrong with Lua, whatever was missing could be added to
the design-by-committee version and the Lua team could focus on
the version they want to work on with just a few smaller sizes
pre-compiled for convenient number types.
If you like my idea great, if not, that's fine but I would like to
pay my respects to a wonderful community that has helped me a lot
and if this suggestion stinks, I will keep trying-Patrick
