Re: Conquering the world with Lua

[Gavin Wraith <gavin@...>]

On Sat, 30 Sep 2023 11:48:47 +0300
Родион Горковенко <rodiongork@gmail.com> wrote:

> Main point I want to address (attack!) is that Lua is not used for
> education, ...   a big mistake definitely. 

I agree. It has been my experience that educational administrators
seldom appreciate the difference between the requirements for teaching
and the requirements for use or research. For example, users must avoid
reinventing the wheel. Learners, to the contrary, must reinvent the
wheel. Unfortunately many administrators believe (wrongly IMHO) that
just because a language is popular it has to be good for teaching.

I recommend Roberto's lecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxcSvnEIUq4
in any discussion of the merits of Lua for teaching.

Lua makes much clearer the contradiction between space and time: the use
of functions, f(x), and lookup-tables, f[x]. As far as I know, no other
language does this.

Scheme (and the SICP book) used to be the big educational programming
language in the USA. Lua could certainly take its place. Unfortunately
neither Scheme nor Lua are much use for teaching the importance of
strong typing in programming. I suppose it depends on the educators'
targets.

-- 
http:/www.wra1th.plus.com/
-- Gavin Wraith