Re: Using Lua for config files

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@trms.com> wrote:
> I have had this discussion with people at work. They're concerned
> about what will happen when our users will have access to our
> "internals". "Tech support is hard enough now. What happens when we're
> debugging their scripts?"

It's a valid concern. One point is that one does not willy-nilly
expose 'internals' to a scripter but a carefully constructed domain
model for the problems that interest them (the DSL approach). The
support burden is lessened by ensuring that the scripting interface
returns useful error messages and can also produce diagnostic logs for
the support team.  Oh, and documentation ;)

So it is extra work but the pay-off is a lot of extra flexibility for
those who are sufficiently curious to learn to extend the system (many
users would just need a well-defined configuration subset)

(Totally agree that the best state to approach problems is 'slightly
stoopid', aka 'beginner's mind'. )

steve d.