Have you read large Lua codebases written by others? It is write-only language. ...

spacechild1 · 2025-10-07T22:46:07 1759877167

I'm talking about the core language, which I do find very predictable. You can go crazy with any language. Lua is definitely not worse than Python or JS in this regard.

> No static typing to rest your eye on.

That goes for any dynamically typed language. How is that an argument against Lua in particular?

> Have you read large Lua codebases written by others?

No, because I use it as a scripting language, as intended. I totally agree that one shouldn't use dynamically typed languages for building large applications. But again, this is not specific to Lua.

112233 · 2025-10-08T06:14:42 1759904082

Oh, as a scripting language you embed into your project so that you can write scripts for it — there is hardly anything better than Lua. The C code is super clean and easy to embed and modify.

But once that project gets passed to next maintainer — I'm not sure I'd pick Lua over Forth or Scheme.

pjmlp · 2025-10-08T07:26:58 1759908418

I would pick Tcl instead, but I am biased. :)

spacechild1 · 2025-10-08T09:29:42 1759915782

I occasionally have to write Tcl. No thanks :)

pjmlp · 2025-10-08T10:07:28 1759918048

I wrote it during four years as main language (1999 - 2003), alongside C.

jay_kyburz · 2025-10-08T05:38:41 1759901921

Yes, I was going to write this comment a few hours ago but never got around to it. Working on other peoples Lua can be very painful.

Even the fact that people really want to write object oriented code, but every project rolls its own class system is a problem.

When I write lua is just tables of data and functions. I try to keep it as simple as possible.

I've been enjoying writing games for the Playdate, and in Love2d.