Re: Dead Batteries

[Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile@...>]

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 20:44, Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 22:00:15 +0000
> Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile@majumdar.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 21:51, Lorenzo Donati
> > <lorenzodonatibz@tiscali.it> wrote:
> >
> > > OTOH the lack of such batteries greatly hamper the diffusion of Lua
> > > as a general purpose language.
> > >
> >
> > Well Python is arguably a better general purpose language
>
> Only because batteries.
>

Not only because of. In my experience Python is a more user friendly
language. Lua is more geek friendly.

>
> > and has a
> > very powerful set of libraries. Why does the world need another one?
>
> Personally speaking, so I can have a batteries included language whose
> only complex datatypes are table and metatable.
>
> As far as the question "why does the world need another one?", one
> could have asked that about C, because you can do *anything* with C. It
> might take ten times more code, it might tremendously increase the
> likelihood of errant pointers and buffer overruns, but C is the
> ultimate general purpose language: Why do we need another one?
>

Of course a new language is always possible, but in general, languages
fit into specific niches. Lua is successful because it fits into its
own niche. It cannot and should not be a Python replacement.

> Just as a point of information, I recommended a curated group of
> add-ons be in a separate package, not in the Lua package. That way
> embedded programmers can use just Lua.
>

I think Lua team have endorsed LuaRocks - that is as far as it will
ever go probably.
To do anything better is significantly more difficult and requires a
huge amount of effort. I know this because I am trying to create a
small let of libraries in Suravi.

Regards