Re: Lua voices

[Andrew Starks <andrew@...>]

I think it’s a great sign that we see the same few tired issues get trotted out ad nauseam. It means that there are very few real problems left to solve at the language level and people are left battling their own preconceived notion of what perfection looks like, convinced that if only their proposal for globals or lists or case statements or... would be adopted, some nebulous goal would be achieved Lua would finally be... what?

We are all the hero of whatever narrative we’re creating and it’s easy to be convinced of our own brilliance. And fortunes have been built on Lua as it is. So come with data and a real problem to solve or know that your just venting a bunch of noise. 

Voices are fine, if they start with a good story about a problem that’s hard to solve the way Lua is. I think it’s ignorant to start off with statements like, “global by default is bad...”  Better to come with your hat in your hand and ask, “Why?” first. 

-Andrew

On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 18:37 Sean Conner <sean@conman.org> wrote:

It was thus said that the Great Dibyendu Majumdar once stated:
>
> But to be honest, only the Lua
> team would qualify as the few capable of language design. The rest of
> us: do we have anything to show that would qualify us as great
> language designers?

  What makes a language designer "great"?

  I really hate the notion that only a select few people are capable of
designing a language.  I don't think anyone here will claim that Bill Gates
is a "great" language designer, yet his BASIC language was arguably one of
the most successful languages in use (Apple ][, Atari, Commodore, Tandy,
IBM, all used Microsoft BASIC).  C has problems (many problems) and if the
consensus on Hacker News [1] or Lobsters [2] are any indication, anyone
using C should be arrested (at best), so that leaves out K & R as "great"
language designers.  I personally despise the philosophy of Java and Go [3]
so I don't consider Gosling or Pike to be "great" language designers [4] (I
would also throw Guido van Rossum, creator of Python, in with this
group---he too, does not trust programmers).

  Larry Wall [5] was a *linguist*, not a computer scientist and yet
people *love* Perl (or loved---it's considered "legacy" these days).  And a
lack of programming experience never stopped Rasmus Lerdorf [6] from
creating PHP.

  Anyone can create a programming language.  The trick is getting people to
*use* it.

  -spc (*I* even created a language while in college!  It's not that hard)

[1]     http://news.ycombinator.com/

[2]     http://lobste.rs/

[3]     Don't trust the programmer with any advanced features; they're too
        dumb to understand and the advanced features will be abused.

[4]     The have large corporations pushing their agenda unto us.

[5]     Creator of Perl.

[6]     http://www.azquotes.com/author/47278-Rasmus_Lerdorf