Re: Conquering the world with Lua

Despite its prevalent use in games, I feel in a sense that Lua hasn't ever escaped its

academic roots. That could be because it is still led by a small number of university

professors at a (single?) academic institution, who probably bring a more academic

mindset to the table. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that, but I suppose

it might bring tradeoffs. In particular, I think the stringent focus on adherence to principle

together with a lack of emphasis put on fleshing out a standard, robust package eco-

system to support standalone applications may have prevented Lua from reaching

critical mass.

From a language standpoint, I think some of Lua's selling points in the minds of more

advanced programmers (coroutines, first class functions, mechanisms over policies,

etc.) are probably not so for non-programmers/beginners. I realize that non-programmers

have successfully used Lua in restricted scripting environments, but when such an

individual is tasked to build a standalone application that does something practical,

I can't envision any scenario where using Lua would not be harder than using Python.

All of that said, it might have just come down to luck and happenstance, as I have

definitely not cracked the code of what makes languages successful. In any case,

at this point, now that we do have Python occupying the niche that it occupies, I think

it's probably best for Lua to just remain on the course that it has always been on,

namely, focusing on being small, embeddable, principled, etc., which I assume are

probably at odds with it reaching critical mass in the same sense as Python.

On Sat, Sep 30, 2023 at 8:56 AM actryx <actryx@protonmail.com> wrote:

"
Lua makes much clearer the contradiction between space and time: the use
of functions, f(x), and lookup-tables, f[x]
"

... and coroutines for control over space and time.

For learning advanced software design that's all you need;the rest is distraction.

Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

------- Original Message -------
On Saturday, September 30th, 2023 at 11:17, Gavin Wraith <gavin@wra1th.plus.com> wrote:

> 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