Re: Is Lua stable? (Was: Strange Operators (Was: Why I leave Lua (Was: Re: [ANN] Lua 5.3.0 (work3) now available)))

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

2014-07-11 0:57 GMT+02:00 Steven Degutis <sbdegutis@gmail.com>:

> Now, looking at the timeline page[1], it looks like development is
> rapidly declining. There have only been 4 years between 1.0 and 3.0, 3
> years between 3.0 and 4.0, 3 years between 4.0 and 5.0 which was
> released 11 years ago, and since then we've been seeing only minor
> version changes.
>
> It makes sense that Lua's development "progress" (for lack of a better
> word) would be rapidly declining, if its features are stabilizing to
> the point where it's good enough for the purpose it sets out for: to
> be the ideal general purpose language to embed in a C host.
>
> But a very small part of me is concerned that it will continue to grow
> in breaking ways,

Lua 5.3 introduces integer subtypes and basic UTF-8 lexing into
codepoints. These are major advances and will be used by many.

Lua 5.3-work3 however shrinks in a breaking way by omitting
some math functions found on entry-level school calculators
that sell for under $10 like the FX 260, for reasons that appear
to be:

> simply for the sake of continuing to work on it when
> there's nothing left to work on.