Re: Lua awareness

[liam mail <liam.list@...>]

On 9 December 2012 12:31, Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> wrote:
>
> In many case Lua is (cf. its intention) part of something else. I can only
> speak for luatex, but I'm pretty sure that by now quite some tex users are
> aware of Lua but you won't find them on this list or reddit or whatever but
> on tex related lists.

That sounds good, although these are now the converted or at least the
people who know about the Language.

>That's also where they discuss Lua related issues. In
> the journals of tex user groups there have been (and will be) articles
> mentioning / showing lua, at user group meetings and conferences there are
> talks about it, on support lists it's discusses, in distributions it's used,
> etc.
>

Do you have links for these please?


> Personally I don't give much about these popularity polls (and I wonder if
> these internet polls can be trusted anyway). It's like politics: is the one
> getting most votes also the best?
>

I am somewhat of a similar mind but in the same breath I feel Lua does
have a problem where people are not aware of the Language; also we all
know it has been said many times "No one talks about Lua".

> I really like the pace of development of Lua as well as the professionality
> of the dev team.

Debatable, the team seems to dismiss the idea of open development as
they do not see it having _any_ benefits where as I, maybe wrongly,
feel this would be one small step to fixing them problem.

>For me that's worth more than the language ending up high
> on some list. The team makes me feel that we've chosen the right language, I
> don't need to look at popularity contest for that.
>
> Hans
>

Your message sounds a lot like "Lua does not have a problem" which is
what I said in the previous mail. Instead of the majority of people
who know about the Language treating it as a toy, some would like to
work with the language on a paid basis which is currently only
possible for a select few. I do not foresee the prospects improving
much without something actively being done about it and seeing the
team really don't seem to care much about the situation[1] maybe it is
for the community to step up.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-VQBw5OpJIQ#t=2455s

--Liam