Re: BASIC-like Lua variant

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

2014/1/16 Brett Taylor <brettayl@gmail.com>:

> Which Lua 'distro' is best for a total newbie?
> I have noticed that there are different ready-to-deploy binary packages, on
> different websites. Which one is causes the least hassle to set up and is
> the simplest for learning the basics?

When I noticed Lua for the first time, I was a total newbie
to Lua — but I was an experienced TeX user. For me, then,
the "least hassle" answer was: texlua. It does not have the
standalone interactive interpreter,  but it was already on the
system thanks to TeX.

Later, when I discovered Lua was a popular game scripting
language, the "least hassle" was Love2D. Again, no standalone,
but all the things you need then, e.g filesystem, mouse support,
2D graphics, sound, are already there.

Both those packages embed a particular oldish version of Lua
with which their add-ons are compatible.

Now I've graduated to "pure" Lua and I'm not a total newbie.
Only now does it make sense to me to use the most up-to-date
Lua, and "least hassle" is to have a C compiler that I also use
for other stuff anyway, load the source package directly from
lua.org, and type "make linux" or "make mingw" or whatever.
Then I install luarocks and use that to install whatever else
I need. If something has not been made availaible as a rock,
it's either bleeding-edge or obsolete, so I don't use those.

I've never used any of those "distributions" that give you many
add-on packages. I don't want to start a flame war, so I won't
say why not; not having used them, my opinions are prejudices
anyway. Maybe they are "least hassle", I wouldn't know.