Re: Raspberry Pi and Lua

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 9:59 AM, Dimiter 'malkia' Stanev
<malkia@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been very curious about live coding in any way possible.

Yep, my first computing experience was a University mainframe, which
had an old LISP interpreter (back when you actually said 'plus' and
'quote'). That blew my mind, and the reverberations from that
explosion are still happening.

> Anyway anything that brings me closer and closer to the machine without
> requiring me to recompile, and still run pretty fast is good :)

We say that for practical purposes, Lua 'compiles instantly' but that
misses the point; recompilation resets a module. It's possible to
compile functions incrementally, but it isn't easy, because of having
to replace upvalues. (I suspect this is easier in Lua 5.2)  I've felt
for a long time that 'operating on a live patient' is a productive way
to view development, the kind of thing that Smalltalk people take for
granted.

steve d.