When people ask me what language they should use/learn for something, I usually mention Lua, if it's appropriate. But then the same few issues come up... "Well the standard library is pretty minimal[1]... The socket library doesn't appear to be maintained anymore... A lot of things, including LuaSocket and LuaJIT[2] aren't compatible with 5.2 and might never be..." and people are turned off pretty quickly.
I am regularly surprised to read that LuaSocket is still not officially supported for Lua 5.2 and that is an argument against the language.
In July, I made a fork from Steve Donovan's luabuild [1] and ported LuaSocket for Lua 5.2. It took me only a few hours, it wasn't difficult.
I already tried to send a patch to LuaSocket's maintainer with no luck. Maybe I should try again... who is supposed to take care of LuaSocket maintenance?
[1]
https://github.com/prapin/luabuild
--
-- Patrick Rapin
-- coauthor of "Le guide de Lua et ses applications", D-BookeR
