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

[Coda Highland <chighland@...>]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 7:54 AM, Stefano <phd.st.p@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 25 Feb 2016 11:15, "Viacheslav Usov" <via.usov@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:18 AM, 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.
>>
>> Given that Lua is officially an "extension language", the scarcity of
>> all-Lua applications should hardly be surprising.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> V.
>>
>> [1] "Lua is an extension programming language [...], Lua has no notion of
>> a "main" program: it only works embedded in a host client, called the
>> embedding program or simply the host."  -
>> http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html
>
> Some think differently: "Lua is a powerful, dynamic and light-weight
> programming language. It may be embedded or used as a general-purpose,
> stand-alone language."
> [http://luajit.org/luajit.html]
>
> Having personally used it with success in the latter scenario I find it
> unhelpful that no effort is spent in pursuing further that direction.
> Probably most people interested in that have already moved on.
>
> Stefano

It should be noted that its use as a standalone language is
near-exclusively the domain of Linux, where people don't have a
problem installing dependencies. At least on Windows, you're either
going to have to bundle Lua (at which point a rock doesn't make sense)
or write a wrapper app that embeds Lua (at which point a rock doesn't
make sense). Standalone apps distributed as Lua code aren't going to
see traction on Windows, and unless Microsoft themselves starts
deploying Lua, that's not going to change.

/s/ Adam