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

[Jonathan Goble <jcgoble3@...>]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 3:31 AM, Daurnimator <quae@daurnimator.com> wrote:
> I think there is another category: people write single use scripts and utilities
> e.g. converting files, data processing, personal automation.

This is me. I initially starting learning Lua (my first true
programming language, if you don't count the BASIC I wrote as a kid on
my RadioShack Tandy PC-4) as a means of automating some tedious tasks
for a forum-based roleplaying game. You're welcome to look at the
butt-ugly script I wrote [1][2], though I warn you that it reflects my
lack of programming skills at the time, and as such you are welcome to
laugh at and make fun of it. :-) I would never write something like
that today. I mostly use Python for that purpose (personal automation)
today, but there are still occasions where I find Lua to be easier
(such as code that makes heavy use of associative arrays, for which
Lua has cleaner syntax versus Python dicts, and anything that can
benefit from tail call elimination, which Python doesn't do).

As for application vs. module on LuaRocks, the one thing I have on
LuaRocks (matchext) is by its nature a module, though one that could
probably be easily integrated into an application. That brings me to
another point: well-written modules, especially pure C modules, can be
easily integrated with an application to extend its capabilities
beyond pure Lua. So having a large number of modules is useful for
application writers.

[1] Main script:
http://limmierpg.wikia.com/wiki/User:Master_Jonathan/generator.lua
[2] Data file: http://limmierpg.wikia.com/wiki/User:Master_Jonathan/data.lua