Re: A citation on Lua

[perlster <perlster@...>]

On Mon, Dec 18, 2006 at 10:57:54AM -0700, Gavin Kistner wrote:
> From: perlster
> [snip]
> > So far, the Lua test-driving experience has sucked!
> > However, something tells me that this is the language
> > that I should be using for web development.
> 
> Really? I really like Lua, but I would strongly disagree.
> 
> In my opinion, Lua's strengths are:
>   * ease of embedding into other applications
>   * small size of interpretter
>   * fast speed of execution, and reasonably low memory usage
>   * simple core makes it easy to learn and flexible to code in
>   * dynamic (mostly) strongly typed variables
> 
> Your needs may differ from mine, but for web development very little of
> that matters to me. I need a language that prioritizes my time, and
> makes me more efficient, not the machine. Web servers are fast, and (I
> believe) most of the time involved in a transaction is due to latency,
> file IO, and database overhead. Programming in Lua is fun for me, but
> it's still programming. There's still a large amount of typing to
> support the moderately verbose syntax. There's still a fair amount of
> bending the task at hand to the limited toolset available in Lua.
> 
> For web development, I personally chose Ruby (both on Rails and with
> other libraries). Its interpretter is neither small nor speedy. It is
> not easy to embed in other applications. However, it has a rich set of
> features available for general purpose programming as well as web
> development. Its syntax is more terse than Lua (but not so terse as
> Perl) and, for me, programming in it is a joy. Code just flows out of my
> fingers. As one amusing community member put it in Haiku:
>   A ruby program
>   before I even notice
>   is already done
> 
> I'm not bashing Lua. I'm not pushing Ruby over it. I'm not bashing you
> for thinking that it's the language you think you should learn for web
> development. But I am interested in what made you choose it for web
> development.

I haven't *chosen* it yet! I'm simply evaluating it. It appears to be very
fast. CGILua and the Kepler Project seems like a good idea -- Lua / CGILua can
run as an Apache module (both in Unix and Windoze) which for me is great. As
such, I have the choice of embedding Lua code in HTML pages like in PHP; or
crank out Lua code which outputs HTML as needed; or uses HTML templates with
Lua code in there. It all sounds great, if you can put it all together and
make it work and keep your sanity. I've been having startup problems, for which
I need direction. It seems however, that the Lua community, by and large, are
not into web development, so this whole CGILUA thing and Apache etc. is not
something familiar. That's my guess.

My admitedly limited background is Perl and PHP with mySQL. I prefer Perl over
PHP, but OOP and I do not mix well. The fact that I can use Lua without OOP is
what attracted me to it to begin with. We'll see where my quest takes me.
-- 
duke	|   A: Yes.						        |
	|   >Q: Are you sure?					        |
	|   >>A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.  |
	|   >>>Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?