Re: [ANN] Lua 5.3.0 (work3) now available

On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 3:55 AM, steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 3:14 AM, Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@trms.com> wrote:
> I am led to the thought that, perhaps, the best way to a healthy Lua is a
> really strong MoonScript.

That's an interesting opinion, Andrew. MS is still relatively
immature and definitely harder to learn than stock Lua (sometimes
error messages are less than helpful and there's a lot more syntax
involved, especially some *horizontal* whitespace sensitivites)

Lovely notation for the expert Lua dev in a hurry, tho.

Right,

In the context of a conversation about "what everyone should have in Lua," a complete math library makes perfect sense. I presume that's out of a desire to use Lua as an independent tool.

If you're using Lua in the same way that WikiMedia or Blizzard is, which is as a "powerful, fast, lightweight, *embeddable* scripting language" to include in your own ecosystem, then this borders on irrelevant. As an example, WikiMedia removed coroutines, which demonstrates how much uniformity matters to them. If they need these functions, they will take the half hour needed to add them back in, or happily continue to use what they are using, forever.

Likewise, when a change or addition to Lua is suggested, you will usually get an answer along the lines of "here is a link that shows you how to remove this" or "add that," which makes no sense, if you think of everyone's Lua as a homogeneous playground to run your module code within.

I believe that the source of friction is here. Not only for "math," but also for "continue" and, and and.

So, a bytecode compatible MoonScript that paid attention to interoperating with PUC Lua might be a good thing. It would be free from the constraints that define Lua and make it the very best at what it is.

But, I fear that such a world would go much too far in the other direction and you'd end up looking too much like other choices.

Finally, when it comes to the decisions that the Lua team makes, perhaps there is a passion for simplicity that goes beyond explanation. Quite a lot of wonderful and beautiful things are made this way, and it is open source, after all. :)

-Andrew