Re: Standard for Lua

[David Given <dg@...>]

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Andy Stark wrote:
[...]
> Language standards probably made more sense when all implementations were
> secrets owned by companies but with open source there is always one
> definitive implementation anyway. It seems like a long time ago, but
> JavaScript was actually proprietary once and there is still
> (intentionally) no single reference implementation. That's why the ECMA
> standard is useful there, perhaps.

However, you can consider this a feature, rather than a failing. Having a
well-defined standard means that you can have multiple coexisting
implementations, each of which is verified against the standard. Having a
reference implementation means that all other implementations must be
bug-for-bug compatible with the reference implementation. (See Python.)

For example: Javascript makes my teeth itch and I have as little to do with
it as possible. (See the archives here for my many messages explaining
why...) These days, if I want to write rich web apps, I do it in Java using
Google Web Toolkit, which is an incredibly neat system allowing Java to be
compiled into Javascript and deployed in a web page. The generated code is
incredibly nasty, but it works superbly well. This is only really feasible
*because* Java's a standard with multiple implementations.

If Lua was a standard, it would allow the various half-finished alternative
implementations floating around the 'net to be verified, have their failings
catalogued and addressed, and become more useful. (Who knows, maybe someone
will come up with an implementation based around Javascript...)

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