Re: language experimentation [was: co-routines]

["Nick Trout" <nick@...>]

> Jean-Claude Wippler wrote:
> >  - is lua-l a suitable place to start feature/language discussions?
> Discussions are very difficult if you get no response...  I guess that
> most subscribers are programmers but there have been not very much
> discussions about new ideas and their implementation.  Pretty strange.
>>We just don't have much imagination, and read in slack-jawed awe as others
discuss that which we cannot understand  ;-).
Actually, I'd love to do some of the same kind of experimentation you're
doing. Unfortunately I can't even find time to look at what you did.
  - Tom

I'd just like to second this :-) I see Lua as a fantastic time saver, i.e. a
great, practical, fast, embeddable, usable language which saves me writing
one. I'd love to contribute more but just dont have the time. I think for a
lot of users (including me!) it takes all their time to understand the
language as it is and use it in the way intended (thank God for toLua -
painless move from 3 to 4). I feel like I am only scratching the surface
with it.

Personally, I think the discussion forum would be improved by moving it to a
newsgroup (look at comp.lang.python as an example - you have a community
there). Different threads could be discussed more coherently. I know this
has been mentioned before, maybe there are enough people now? - Or maybe I
just need to get a decent mail browser that can sort my mail - anyone at MS
listening :-)


[snip]
"Russell Y. Webb" wrote:
>
> b = 10
> c = 1
> function test(x)
> global c;
>     b = "this does not change the global";
>     c = "but this does";
>     print(10); -- this uses the read access to globals
> end
>
>> ET: I thought about this myself.  But it complicates the parser a lot.
(Especially: a,b,c,d=foo4()  where a and d are new locals, b an old
local and c a global).  And you may get some strange semantics.
Are your patches anywhere to have a look at?

I for one am prepared to accept that you must use the local keyword in Lua
to stop complicated and diverging code bases. I also use Python and it works
as above - that's just the way it is.

[snip]
> As a smaller language, it seems that
> the risk of people taking it in different directions is more acute than
> with larger bodies of code.  This would be very unfortunate, since it
> would prevent consolidation and growth of a common core and user base.
>> ET: Sol is meant as an experimental platform.  I mainly made it to show
how some ideas could be implemented and the effects of them.  And I
hope that some of the ideas will flow back to Lua.  (If not, I at least
have a neat little language to play with *g*)

I think this is a good idea. You can be far more experimental with this
prototype version. You can also develop it in the open style that you would
like. Support for threads could get in a bit of a state unless work examples
are tinkered with before being implemented in proper in Lua. Python has
various versions being experimented with in parallel (eg. stackless) and
these changes could well make it into the core development at some point. I
think its worth saying that Lua probably wouldnt be the language that it is
if the developers hadnt been so focussed and a bit stubborn.

N