Writing and maintaining a medium-sized code base

[tyrondis <tyrondis@...>]

Hey *,

I would like to get your experiences on how you write and maintain code that goes beyond a simple script and make sure that it is stable, bug-free (ideally) and does not break from any chances.

I chose Corona SDK as a game engine for a game I want to write and it uses Lua as its scripting language. I really like the language, however, coming from a mostly statically typed language background (Java, C++, C#) I always feel a bit insecure about my Lua code. There is this constant feeling of uncertainty about whether I broke something with a change and I will not discover it because I do not happen to bring the interpreter to that exact spot to trigger the issue.

By no means I want to start a debate about dynamically vs statically typed languages. I like both approaches and I enjoy Lua a lot. I simply want to get some best practices on how to write great quality Lua code on a larger scale.

Having a great coverage of unit tests would be a great start, however, it is a bit difficult with Corona, as most of its APIs (Graphics, Audio, etc.) are only available inside the embedded system and I do not want to mock everything.

Looking forward to a great discussion.
Tyrondis