Re: Lua Ecosystem

["Pierre Chapuis" <catwell@...>]

> On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 9:11 PM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> I say that if there are over 60000
>> packages in an ecosystem, there might as well be none.  You'll never
>> find the needle you need in such a haystack.

Which is why there is also a point about discoverability later on. And it
is no coincidence that Lua Toolbox is inspired by Ruby Toolbox.

> Once you get to that size, you absolutely need disciplined
> namespacing. Despite its faults, Java insisted on this from the word
> go.

Python does not. Ruby does not, and does not even have proper modules.

> I don't particularly mind all the JSON implementations, but they have
> a tendency to require 'json' - rather confusing for the reader!

Yes... Also this results in conflicts if you use modules that depend on
different implementations.

> I'd wager that with +10,000 packages, there is going to be a lot of
> crap (Sturgeon's Law).

Overall quality will probably decrease, but the quality of the top modules
will increase if the number of their contributors increases, and there
will be a much longer tail.

If the module that decodes barcodes is not perfect, that's not great, but
better than if it doesn't exist.