Re: Two types of Lua programmer, or two types of Lua code?

[Daurnimator <quae@...>]

On 25 February 2016 at 19:18, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the perception that >90% of the rocks available on the primary
> repository provide modules and <10% provide applications, and the
> suspicion that 10% is a very generous estimate.
>
> Yet I find it hard to believe that 90% of the time of a typical Lua
> programmer is spent in developing tools and 10% in developing
> applications.
>
> I can think of several possible explanations.
>
> 1. Many of those modules are really stripped-down applications.
> Just wrap them with I/O or a GUI, and presto!

This is a good thing!
All good applications are just wrappers around a library.

> 2. Most of what we really do is confidential and can't be shared.

I'm sort of up this alley with my $DAYJOB.
I try to release all the lua libraries I can that aren't "secret sauce".

> 3. We are prepared to polish and document our tools but the
> effort is just too much for the application.

The lack of documentation for released libraries suggests this isn't a
common path of reasoning.

> 4. We just don't think anybody else would be interested in the
> application.

Sort of; see below.

> 5. The whole way that LuaRocks is structured encourages the
> module approach to the point that nothing else really fits.

Not at all IMO.
See the various tools that are installed via luarocks; ones I use
daily: busted, luacheck.

===============

I think there is another category: people write single use scripts and utilities
e.g. converting files, data processing, personal automation.

For these applications, you often need to build a library to operate
with the device or create a binding to a library, which deserves to be
released,
but the application is dead code the minute it is written.