Re: C++ & Lua for people like me?

[HyperHacker <hyperhacker@...>]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 15:46, Javier Guerra Giraldez
<javier@guerrag.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Patrick Mc(avery
> <spell_gooder_now@spellingbeewinnars.org> wrote:
>> it's just that C++ scares the hell out of me.
>
> that seems a great reason to dive into it.
>
> --
> Javier
>
>

You can do GUIs with just Lua, using libraries such as LuaGnome or
others whose names I can't quite remember at the moment. It's still
not terribly easy for a newbie, as GUIs are rather complex (but
perhaps some of those libraries are easier than those I've been
using), but worlds easier than writing such complex apps in C++. I'm
not sure from your post whether you're new to programming in general
or just to C++/Lua.

I know C++ pretty well and a few other languages, and I still don't
like it for various reasons. However, it's not something you can
easily get away from, so it's good to know. Personally I'd recommend
learning C and C++ by making simple console apps and perhaps Lua
libraries, before trying to get into GUIs, as they can be overwhelming
at first.
Sockets are fairly simple, so you can have some fun building networked
apps that you can interface via Telnet (or your own client program),
IRC, etc. Writing an IRC bot is a popular exercise (and also something
you can do purely in Lua, though not especially difficult in C/C++
either). HTTP is also pretty simple, so you can write some web apps,
using HTML as your GUI.

Another thing you might do is learn Java. It's similar to C++ but a
little nicer in my opinion, and extremely well-documented. While
making GUIs in Java isn't much easier than making them in any other
language, the extensive documentation is a big help.

-- 
Sent from my toaster.