Philippe, thanks for the reply.
so i am been programming in Basic for over 38 years.
my first computer had a version of basic hand-coded by bill gates, in the 1970's.
yes, it is true that visual basic does require the use of an IDE but visual basic for application does have a interactive console.
yes, i use print() and that works and only for people who cannot do edit-and-continue are doomed to be punished with just print().
not a very nice solution when i am trying to teach programming concepts to children.
lol, i used to program using punch cards on an ibm mainframe, perhaps we should downgrade back to that, who needs keyboards anyway...
since i first asked my question, and based on some posts and doing some research, edit-and-continue can in fact be done for Lua from the interactive console.
it is much more then a crutch or convenience.
anybody that has not tried it should not trivialize it.
all the more so for Lua.
Lua is designed to be a embedded solution, often used by non-programmers.
for example, arrays indexes start from 1, not zero.
you should take a look at the posts by Kevin T. Ryan.
one example of what he wrote is:
"You may want to try ZeroBrane Studio:
>> http://notebook.kulchenko.com/zerobrane/live-coding-in-lua-bret-victor-style"
after looking at the videos, let me know what you think. youtube has some great videos.
look at the zues editor for Lua videos
thanks and enjoy.
> To: lua-l@lists.lua.org
> From: PhiLho@GMX.net
> Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 14:44:44 +0200
> Subject: Re: newbie: how to modify lua code while the program is running like visual basic
>
> On 21/06/2012 21:41, yoyomeltz yoyomeltz wrote:
> > kevin, thanks you much. it does seem to offer what i wanted but the problem is i would be
> > locked into an ide that does not seem to offer much else.
> >
> > there has to be a simple way to dynamically reload code as needed via a
> > console/command.line or other simple solution.
> > if visual basic from microsoft can do it and python can do it, then why should i be an
> > issue for Lua.
> > even visual basic 6.0 from 10 years ago can do that.
> >
> > it seems to me this such a feature is a pre-requisite for learning any language, espcially
> > a lightweight scripting language.
> > so does anybody have any other suggestions?
>
> Well, if I am not mistaken, VB is "locked into an IDE"...
> I don't know for Python.
> Debugging is often tied to an IDE anyway, unless you are using some command line debug
> tool (but that's still a tool, often separate of the compiler / interpreter, no?).
>
> Eclipse (and probably other Java IDEs as well) allows such hot fix, changing code while
> running and the program continue to run with this change.
> Now, it has some limitations: if you change a method while debugging in it, Eclipse puts
> the current program line pointer to the start of the method.
> If you change deeply a class, eg. the visibility of a method, or a new method, it tells
> you it can't do the hot fix and shows markers in the debug stack trace to show the code is
> no longer synchronized.
>
> So it isn't a perfect feature for every language / IDE. Just a very convenient feature!
>
> Note: don't under-evaluate the power of print() in tracing / debugging Lua! :-)
>
> --
> Philippe Lhoste
> -- (near) Paris -- France
> -- http://Phi.Lho.free.fr
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
>
>
>
>
