Re: Growing a Language

["steve donovan" <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Mark Meijer <meijer78@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is in many ways analogous to what is being done for Lua
> distributions, such as LfW. And in light of the discussions in our
> recent essay week here on this list, I just thought this might be an
> interesting view to point out.

Indeed!  Languages like Java and Python come with a blessed kit of
libraries, (both language _and_ platform) whereas Lua and C are small
languages with only the basic batteries.  The core Lua team is like
Linus Torvalds, they do the kernel, and so we have distributions.  The
analogy isn't exact (the GNU project provided most of the original
userland stuff for Linux) but here we do not expect Roberto to have
strong feelings on any Lua library, except perhaps lpeg ;)  And
there's definitely room for a few Lua distributions, meeting various
needs.

For instance, I like Norman Ramsey's idea that Lua can be made into a
bash-replacement with very little extra.  So there's room for a really
compact Linux Lua distribution - the figure for LfW (about 12Meg)
isn't that large by modern standards, but if you want something that
the Linux distro builders will throw in almost as an afterthought,
then it needs to be small. This is not a difficult target, but the
contents needs to be very well chosen.

When I was harbouring such an ambition, it was called Moonlight, but
there have been too many namespace collisions, mainly due to Ximian
needing to follow MS down every diversion ;)

steve d.