A "collaborative book" on Lua? (or: Bruce Eckel's take on Lua)

["Fabio Reis Cecin" <frcecin@...>]

Hey, this might be of interest;

Below is the reply got from Bruce Eckel (author of great, free
books on programming languages), about Lua. Yep, people seem
to like Python...

I've never really used Python so I have a bit off-topic question: is
Python a language designed for "programming-in-the-large"?
Does it work for that? If yes, why Lua can't be or will never be
-- what feature would make Python good for large programs?

Also, Bruce brings up the idea of collaboratively developing a book
on Lua, and publishing it for free on the net. This seems a great
idea, if everybody contributed a little, it could be done... ?

- Fabio

On 5 Feb 2003, at 9:17, Bruce Eckel wrote:

> Thanks for the thought.
> 
> Writing a new book is an enormous project, and there must be some
> kind of justification to the effort. Right now the demand for a
> Microsoft-pushed language like C# is significantly less than C++ or
> Java, and my personal interest was captured several years ago by
> Python, which I still see as the most likely "next language" and
> the one in that category that has the most momentum, and yet I
> still haven't been able to finish and publish a book on *that*.
> Since Python, languages like Ruby, D, and now Lua have appeared.
> Although Lua looks interesting and I'm sure that I'm missing some
> of its critical features, it's not clear to me that it has
> advantages over Python that would give a Lua programmer a distinct
> enough advantage over a Python programmer to justify changing to
> the language. In addition, Python has an enormous advantage because
> of the set of libraries developed over the years -- Ruby recently
> "acknowledged" this by making that language able to directly call
> the Python libraries. Without a library like Python's, it's pretty
> hard to sell the productivity increase.
> 
> I hope you can understand that I cannot dedicate 6 or more solid
> months of my life to something that is relatively unknown and has a
> very small user base. I couldn't get a publisher to buy it.
> 
> I understand that to get a user base, you need a good book.
> Historically, companies have found available authors (my plate is
> full) and have funded the author and the publishing process in
> order to produce such a book, but that was when print media was the
> only available form of distribution. With the internet, it is
> possible to create a book (even collaboratively) and distribute it
> for free, so the only cost will be that of developing it, and not
> of printing and distributing it (although you could also use
> print-on-demand for those who want printed copies). If I were you,
> I would pursue that avenue.
> 
> Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but I hope the above might be
> useful.
--
[]'s
Fábio R. Cecin
frcecin@terra.com.br