[first post; hope it's not over the top or off topic]
A Lua testimonial: I've actively used Lua since version 5.1 (current version) was released (has it been 3 years now?). On Windows (only). After buying and poring over PiL, 2nd ed, my first trial was to replace an existing commercial scripting language in my text editor. That was completely successful, and got me up the learning curve.
Since then I've adopted it as my scripting language of choice at work, where it has almost totally replaced Perl (my previous choice).
* Yes, library support is limited, and lack of native regex support is on rare occasions a pain, but in my line of work these have not been significant handicaps.
* As mentioned by others, writing your own Lua functions in C is very approachable. SWIG? Who needs it? I used Perl heavily for years and after reading the docs was scared aware from writing C code to interface to Perl (or Python). Of course the counterargument is that with those P* languages, you don't _need_ to add much code that can only be written in C. Touche.
* If I had more time on my hands to hack, I could see making Lua the core technology for all sorts of low-level system- and embedded-app development [I was a "FORTH dreamer" for years, but Lua realizes a lot of the same dreams that FORTH offered but (for me at least) didn't deliver on].
* Since Lua is so tiny, it's easy to incorporate it, full-source-distro plus statically compiled EXE, into a project it's used in. I do just that, and among the benefits: NO installation needed (I hate installers, and while users expect installers for Windows apps, they don't miss having to run them to get my tools). Users pull down the Lua EXE (including a few custom/downloaded libraries statically linked in) along with the (non-Lua related) source code they're developing (Lua helps with all aspects of their build process) from SCM, and it's ready to run. If need be, it can be copied elsewhere and run. It just works. I can't imagine doing that with Perl/Python, which are also used by others at work, with the usual install/synchronization issues across dozens of hosts.
* I also appreciate that the language's designers have demonstrated a clear commitment to keeping the core language definition as simple as possible.
I'm not dissing the P* languages, one of which I loved for years, but it's nice to find a simple tool that isn't lacking in power. I'll keep using it until a better one comes alone!
Comments
[first post; hope it's not over the top or off topic]
A Lua testimonial: I've actively used Lua since version 5.1 (current version) was released (has it been 3 years now?). On Windows (only). After buying and poring over PiL, 2nd ed, my first trial was to replace an existing commercial scripting language in my text editor. That was completely successful, and got me up the learning curve.
Since then I've adopted it as my scripting language of choice at work, where it has almost totally replaced Perl (my previous choice).
* Yes, library support is limited, and lack of native regex support is on rare occasions a pain, but in my line of work these have not been significant handicaps.
* As mentioned by others, writing your own Lua functions in C is very approachable. SWIG? Who needs it? I used Perl heavily for years and after reading the docs was scared aware from writing C code to interface to Perl (or Python). Of course the counterargument is that with those P* languages, you don't _need_ to add much code that can only be written in C. Touche.
* If I had more time on my hands to hack, I could see making Lua the core technology for all sorts of low-level system- and embedded-app development [I was a "FORTH dreamer" for years, but Lua realizes a lot of the same dreams that FORTH offered but (for me at least) didn't deliver on].
* Since Lua is so tiny, it's easy to incorporate it, full-source-distro plus statically compiled EXE, into a project it's used in. I do just that, and among the benefits: NO installation needed (I hate installers, and while users expect installers for Windows apps, they don't miss having to run them to get my tools). Users pull down the Lua EXE (including a few custom/downloaded libraries statically linked in) along with the (non-Lua related) source code they're developing (Lua helps with all aspects of their build process) from SCM, and it's ready to run. If need be, it can be copied elsewhere and run. It just works. I can't imagine doing that with Perl/Python, which are also used by others at work, with the usual install/synchronization issues across dozens of hosts.
* I also appreciate that the language's designers have demonstrated a clear commitment to keeping the core language definition as simple as possible.
I'm not dissing the P* languages, one of which I loved for years, but it's nice to find a simple tool that isn't lacking in power. I'll keep using it until a better one comes alone!