Re: Lua OS

[Steve Litt <slitt@...>]

On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:09:07 +0800
jyf <jyf1987@gmail.com> wrote:

> actually i hope they could use lua to instead python in gnome

Man, could you imagine that? Could you imagine all the Lua add-ons that
would spawn? Could you imagine how much mindshare that would bring to
Lua?

In my opinion, Lua is the best general purpose computing language,
but I seldom use it for two reasons:

1) Lua add-on tools are comparatively few, immature, untested and
   undocumented.

2) Lua has comparatively little mindshare, so if you're on a project
   and there's a need to write a script, others are going to champion
   Python or Ruby.

If Gnome were to be rewritten in Lua, that would completely smash those
two reasons. In my opinion, a Lua rewrite of Gnome would propel Lua
waaaaay above other languages, not just for kiosks and games and the
like, but for everything. The only holdouts would be people enjoying
Python's indent-sensitive syntax.

Well, speaking as one of the people who *loves* Python's
indent-sensitive syntax, if problems 1 and 2 listed above were cured,
I'd switch to Lua and every program I'd ever write would be Lua, C, or
a combination of the two. Indentation syntax sensitivity is nice, but
it doesn't even begin to compensate for Lua's simplicity and power.

:-) and, as you all know, I long ago worked around Lua's one flaw in
the language itself; lack of a continue statement :-)

If the widely used Gnome were ever rewritten in Lua, I'd go dancing in
the streets.

SteveT