Re: Moonscript as a useful notation for Lua users

[Javier Guerra Giraldez <javier@...>]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 10:08 AM, steve donovan
<steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:
> At the core, there is a modest proposal; that a Lua user could profitably
> learn Moonscript as a more expressive Lua REPL.  For that, they would not
> actually have to learn much at all.  It's like the curious duality between
> 'good language' and 'good command shell'.


ah, ok.  lets discuss that:

here's an unordered list of comments.  (no attempt made to separate
well-thought issues from personal prejudices.)

- a big plus is that i've found MS generates readable Lua.  if that
wasn't true, any "lets use both!" proposal just wouldn't fly.

- while I don't hate significant whitespace, it usually makes it hard
to write full lambdas.

- terseness at the cost of readability is ok for low level languages
(hey, I _like_ bit-twiddling in C), but for scripts it creates more
friction between coder and maintainer.

- local by default?... i'm skeptical that it could be done well.

- predefined OOP:  i don't mind it as long as it's easy to use (and
extend) from real Lua.

- i guess a prerequisite to using it as a "more comfortable for REPL"
dialect of Lua would be a _very_ low mismatch between both languages.
so that the user finds writing in MS easier even if still thinks in
Lua (because most of the system is still written in Lua).  if that's
right, anything beyond plain text substitutions and some syntax sugar
would increase the impedance and force a "mind context switch" between
REPL conversation and core programming.

-- 
Javier