Re: C++ religious war (was: llua Higher-level C API for Lua)

[Jeremy Ong <jeremycong@...>]

Many runtimes support interoperability though. It's easier if it's
thought of from the inception of the runtime. Examples include BEAM
(erl ports) and Haskell's FFI. C# has interoperability within the .Net
ecosystem. That said, some people don't have any need for interop at
all. This is true if you're running a sandboxed web/game server for
example.

As for compiler speed, I understand :). I fall in the camp of people
who are willing to wait because I believe the compiler is doing useful
work for me (type checking, static assertions, compile time
expressions, generics). This does mean I have to be proactive about
segmenting my code in smaller compilable units (library separation).
I'm more inclined to wait the more robust the type system is up to a
point. As compilers get better/faster, more parallelized, and more
heavily optimized, my hope is that the impatient programmers among us
won't feel like they're sacrificing too much time with a more heavily
compiled language.

Of course, there is the case when I can't tolerate compile times, and
that's when I'm scripting websites, UI, game behavior, or anything I
want immediate visual/audio feedback on. That's where things like Lua
come in.

On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 2:04 AM, steve donovan
<steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Jeremy Ong <jeremycong@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think the real war that should be waged is the one between people
>> who think that there is "one true language" and those that are more
>> polyglot oriented.
>
> That's a very good point.   If you only know one tool, you force it to
> fit all tasks.  ("If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a
> nail").  This also gives perspective to the long wait for the "one
> true language" since it cannot be both 'one' and 'true' ;)
>
> For polygots to get on, there has to be interoperability.  That counts
> against the "opinionated runtimes" (e.g. JVM, CLR) since you can
> either join them or leave them.  I like C for many of the reasons I
> like Lua:  flexible, pragmatic, small and fast to compile.
>
> (There are cognitive factors in language adoption. I appear to be one
> of those who find it difficult to wait for a compiler ;))
>