Re: Lua and Neko comparison

[Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@...>]

Sam Roberts wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 09:23:42AM -0700, Chris Marrin wrote:
> > A good point and one we all know well. But the sad fact remains that  
> > Lua's oddball syntax is what keeps it from having better penetration  
> > into corporate culture. This is perhaps only sad to me, because I want  

Chris is looking for a flame fest... :-)
Oddball? I find this syntax very easy and pleasant.
I am used to C-like syntax, and appreciate it too, but I don't find Lua 
syntax to be an obstacle to learning. Actually, I would prefer to teach 
Lua to non-programmers than teaching C or JavaScript...

> Other than lua doesn't have the C boolean operators (&&, ||, !), which I
> keep forgetting

I don't miss them. Only the boolean operators...

> and the fact you have to do function calls with a ()
> unless the argument is a string (which I keep forgetting)

That's not mandatory, just some syntactic sugar. print"Foo" vs. 
print("Foo"), not a big deal.

> there isn't
> anything particularly odd about its syntax I can see.

Hear, hear! :-)

> Maybe it is I
> who will find javascript weird if I ever learn it.

Well, it looks like C (or Java), that's why IT people like it, they 
don't like to learn new stuff... ;-)

> Didn't know it was
> a 600lb gorilla.

If that means it is slow and big (compared to Lua), yes.

> Last I heard, it was the cockroach in the cracks of web
> pages called when people pushed buttons on webapps. I must be out of
> touch :-)

It is used for much more than Web pages. Eg. in GreaseMonkey (OK, that's 
for Web pages...), Mozilla extensions, Windows scripting (WSH/JScript), 
SVG and lot more.

--
Philippe Lhoste
--  (near) Paris -- France
--  http://Phi.Lho.free.fr
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