Re: Bloat or no bloat? (Was: [Feature request])

[Udo Schroeter <udo.schroeter@...>]

Being new to the Lua community and all, I'm wondering how common it is
for people to run their own patched (or otherwise modded) runtimes.
Because it seems to me that the Lua core lends itself to a wide
variety of modifications - so if someone really needs a new language
feature it's actually a lot more feasible to go ahead and implement it
than it is with most other languages that come to mind.

One person's bloat is another person's highly anticipated feature. But
is it really that important to get changes into mainline Lua when it's
relatively easy to just patch your copy?

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 12:32 PM, andrew <andrew@viewlands.org.uk> wrote:
> Like everything else Lua obeys the laws of Entropy and so must "bloat". The
> question is how? By obeying its own internal Design "laws" it remains
> efficient, remains embeddable. Python Java etc are anything but embeddable
> the way Lua is.
> A consequence is as said "very repetitive patterns". A solution is as said
> "libraries", and that's standard practice anyway. Let it remain the
> prokaryote it is. Thanks.
>
>
>
> On 22/09/14 08:25, Thierry@spoludo wrote:
>>
>> ‎The initial request was all about testing. It is presented comparatively
>> to python but this practice starts from java. Mainly it is about unit
>> testing. So having a solution based on the debug api isn't that of a trouble
>> although it shall be documented everywhere as a best practice.
>>
>> Part of the slow adoption of any dynamic language is due to the fear of
>> lack of safety in the development, and that this may not scale with larger
>> teams. So what would be a geometric improvement in this regard ? Looking at
>> typescript  or alike (swift) one may have one indication.
>>
>> Then not very costly syntactic add-on could largely increase the
>> attraction of the language, things such as ! = and allowing var as an
>> alternate to local keyword. How much the few extra bytes in the parser would
>> be considered a bloat?
>>
>> There are also some very repetitive patterns (enforced user code bloat ?)
>> to use in Lua, that may be simplified with libraries/syntax. Out of my mind
>> I can't recollect them all, but certainly  array manipulation (init, range,
>> slices...) are far more verbose in Lua whilst very common in any program.
>>
>>
>>
>>    Original Message
>> From: Tim Hill
>> Sent: lundi 22 septembre 2014 09:41
>> To: Lua mailing list
>> Reply To: Lua mailing list
>> Subject: Re: Bloat or no bloat? (Was: [Feature request])
>>
>>
>> On Sep 21, 2014, at 11:20 PM, Roberto Ierusalimschy
>> <roberto@inf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
>>
>>>> Actually, the main point of my post was not to provide a Bourbakian
>>>> definition of "bloat" but to say that supporting ideas that Roberto has
>>>> already indicated he is considering is may well be a productive way
>>>> of getting new features into Lua.
>>>
>>>
>>> This is bloat: a recipe to get new features into Lua, regardless what
>>> you think about them :-)
>>>
>>> -- Roberto
>>>
>>
>> Now come, come. As others have said “bloat” is somewhat subjective. I
>> would offer my own interpretation: “good” features are those that extend the
>> language geometrically, while “poor” features are those that extend it
>> linearly. I would argue that historically this has been the primary criteria
>> for adding features. And many of the “lively” discussions here been about if
>> a feature is geometric or linear.
>>
>> This is not a critique btw, it’s a complement.
>>
>> —Tim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>