Re: Ruby philosophy vs Lua philosophy

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

On Feb 28, 2013, at 0:39, Ross Bencina <rossb-lists@audiomulch.com> wrote:
>
> This really depends on whether you think that's the front yard, or the vacant block next door that the gypsies are camping in.
>
> As you note above, Lua's primary domain is not "general scripting language to use on its own." Like all general purpose languages, it's a building block.
>
> Lua's leadership are focused on the language core, and for this, I for one, am extremely grateful.
>
> In the early days of Python, Python held out great hope as an embeddable scripting language (it was, after all, invented as a better TCL). Then the "lets use it as a general language with a massive runtime library" folks took over and the possibility of using Python as a light-weight embeded language because a de-bundling nightmare. Thankfully Lua looks unlikely to meet the same terrible fate.
>
> My two cents is that what you're looking for, is (and should) be covered by satellite project (like luvit to pick one example). This is analogous to a Linux distro. Distros aggregate and package libraries, the core kernel team just do kernels.
>
> No one bitches that the Linux kernel doesn't contain a web browser or that kernel.org doesn't oversee package management. No one bitches that ANSI C doesn't have a built-in JSON parser. No one complained that C++11 didn't have a working implementation on release-day.
>
> Sure it's not the way Rubyists think about their language, but that's the point isn't it?
>
> Ross.
>

Yes, this is all reasonable. My intent was not to suggest that the Lua
team should be involved. It was only that a team, with some form of
structure, would be what was needed.

I like the idea that this may be accomplished from projects such as
Luvit. I had not thought of that, although those kinds of projects
haven't played with external package management... easily... yet.

-Andrew