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On 01/12/2012 22:43, Pierre Chapuis wrote:
In my opinion Lua is not best learned in a class. It is best learned by reading the manual. Especially in a printed version. When you have it into your hands you think "Is that really all there is to it?" Yes, it is all there is to it. Lua is a jewel, a wonder of software design and you choose to use it when you realize that. But you cannot realize it if if you have not used other languages first.
+1
That being said there is something I think Lua is the perfect language to teach: Object Orientation. Because to use OO in Lua you implement it, and you understand it is not something so complicated. You also understand objects can be seen in two ways: structures with related methods (the x:foo() style) and closures (the x.foo() style).
+1You could state a similar point about data structures. (Also about Lisp and friends, but you don't get efficiency with association lists ;-) Lua provides a proper tool to build any kind of composite data (record, object, tuple) or collection of data (array, set, map...) or linked data (graph, tree, list)... but the prerequisite is one knows these structures simply exist that they, and a clear idea of their _meaning_; because in Lua proper, semantically as well as practically, everything in indistinclty just a table. What I mean is that noone will just happily discover all that by jus using Lua, but should better come to it preequipped with rather wide and deep knowledge and experience. I have long been surprised by assertions about Lua beeing intended for non-programmers --even supposed highly motivated and intelligent. Lua is indeed used by non-programmers... (just spend a few days on a dedicated forum to have an idea of the ubiquitous issues and actual practices).
Denis