Re: LUA oddities..

[Terry Bayne <trbayne@...>]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Patrick Masotta <masottaus@yahoo.com> wrote:

Friend

I like LUA and I use LUA you like it or not..

So far here I haven't seen many Gurus... they are more of the ones that say

that "the differences between C and LUA -help- them to code better and that sort of thing"...

Because sometimes I can't help but open my mouth - and baiting the ignorant is a good game on any given Monday morning..

The basics: Lua != C != C++ != Perl != Pascal != Go.  We agree on this right?  Or maybe not.  It seems you think every language should conform to YOUR idea of what the grammar/syntax should be.

Why is it you stubbornly refuse to write "Lua" as a word rather than as 
an acronym?  You do understand basic grammar, right?  No matter how 
often you say it as "LUA" it still is, and always will be "Lua".  It is a word, and a proper noun, it is not an acronym.  Of course maybe thinking before you write isn't something to which you are accustomed.

Just because you disagree with something in the language doesn't make it
 wrong.  It's only your opinion.  And what's more, your posts to this 
mailing lists have shown what your opinion is worth.  

I've personally used Lua in 3 commercial products and half a dozen personal projects and haven't run into 
"0" or "1" issue.  For that matter neither has Activision/Blizzard, 
arguably the largest user (by any metric you care to use) of Lua in a 
commercial product.  I use Lua as an embedded language, to which I expose functionality in my program for use by users (who, by the way, are seldom programmers/developers)  You haven't described your use.

As for "So far I haven't seen many Gurus",  maybe it's because you are 
asking the wrong questions.  If you need specific help with Lua because 
you can't work out how to do something, please, by all means let us 
know.

It seems to me that so far your questions don't really have answers.  
They appear to be your opinions, structured as questions.  You demand 
justification as to "why" something was done in a way you don't like.  I
 am sure that "I" don't care what you think about computer 
languages, and a web search of your name hasn't shown anything with which to make me think your opinion about a tool I've used successfully for over a decade means anything.  Complaining about a hammer because it doesn't do a good job of inserting Phillips head screws doesn't make a lot of sense.

Finally, as others here have suggested, you are welcome to fork Lua and change it's grammar to your heart's content.  But before you go down that road, let me offer a piece of advice: don't.  I used to patch Lua every time a new version came out so that it would understand "!=" and a few other "C" like items.  I found it to be a waste of time.  My users didn't know "C" and didn't want those changes.  Further the changes meant that I had to create custom versions of the documentation and sample code.... quite the hairball.  In the end the solution was simple.  Adjust my mind set.  Lua is not C.  Problem solved.

Sincerely,
Terry