Re: Ruby philosophy vs Lua philosophy

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Feb 27, 2013, at 20:02, Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> wrote:

> Craig Barnes <craigbarnes85@gmail.com> writes:
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/356160/which-game-scripting-language-is-better-to-use-lua-or-python
>
> Great answer, and also a great example of control-freaky overly
> pedantic stackexchange mods (SE is something that I _want_ to like, it
> just seems a great _idea_, but in practice, I always seem to end up
> with a bad taste in my mouth when I go there)...
>
> -miles
>
> --
> Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from
> the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
>

Miles,

Maybe I'm just grasping for harmony here, but to say that Linus, the
'L' in Linux, doesn't play a critical role in that community's
success, and that he doesn't do so by picking winners and losers from
time to time is revisionist, at best. Ex: github, the scheduler...,

I hope that my low-rent literary flourishes aren't looming too large
here. My point was not about bossy jerks wrecking a harmonious
community is a cure-all. It was about the observation that the lack of
enforced... anything, suits the world that Lua serves very well:
people who need to control the abstractions and define their own
micro-environments.

When promoting Lua to *anyone* who doesn't already know what it is
for, is made difficult by the almost non-existent "the front door is
here" structure of its web presence and... ahem... organically
maintained "standard" library (not speaking of ipairs, getmetatable,
etc.)

Look:

1: Lua great. Bring your own batteries? Awesome for core purpose.
2: People who are smart won't always look past the fact that, for
example, the closest-thing-to-blessed database library boasts in its
latest "what's new" history log: Brand new support for Lua 5.1in
version 2.1.1, (circa 2007)
3: There are advantages to having someone curate a specified portion
of the ecosystem, in this case: desktop scripting.

-Andrew