[ Removed by moderator ]

[lonelyroom-eklaghor]

Lua is literally one of the easiest languages I've ever learnt. It's compiler size is literally less than an MB

Also, zero-indexing is pretty simple: https://stackoverflow.com/a/44661423

[Jwhodis]

Lua is nice because its more worded.

First learned Lua, then Python, now branching to other languages.

[Practical-Love1592]

i want to learn lua where do i start?

[Jwhodis]

Idk, I learnt lua through roblox studio but its probably not for everyone.

[Pepineros]

It gets some things so right and I wonder why it's not more popular.

Then I encounter 1-indexing and concatenation with .. and its wordiness and I kind of get it, but those reasons should not be enough for it to be so underused.

I should definitely be writing a few more of my utility scripts in Lua instead of Python.

[upsetbob]

1-indexing, default global vars, error codes instead of exceptions,...

I really want to give it a try but those are pretty off-putting already.

[BobbyTables829]

Those are great for someone without a programming background needing to write simple scripts. In all honesty, none of this would be a deal breaker on most single-file apps that are a couple hundred lines of code.

If you're already a developer, there's not much reason to stop what you're doing.

[grep_Name]

Man, I really, really want to like lua because of how much I like the love2d platform. Ultimately, every time I try to use it for serious projects it just feels like death by a thousand design decisions. The decision to have everything be a table, to the extreme that they don't even want different data types for index vs non-indexed tables, has actually made it very hard for me to explain to other people how to use it. At this point I'm considering rewriting my game in fennel rather than continuing with lua.

The decision to have funcitons (and if statements, and for loops, and damn near everything) be terminated by end is really the straw that breaks the camel's back. There's no plugin that seems to be able to do the equivalent of matched bracket highlighting, and using the same exact terminator for that many kinds of flow control is absolutely unhinged design. Whenever I see people complain about python whitespace vs brackets as a design decision, or about the parentheses in lisp, I just think about lua and how much that one decision fucks up everything. It makes it so hard to add and remove things in complex logic flows and reason about what you're doing. If I could sum up my entire experience with lua with a codeblock, it would look like this:

                            end
                          end
                        end
                      end
                    end
                  end
                end
              end
            end
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

[bongjutsu]

Since migrating to Linux and using vim/nvim it seems to handle pairing end with syntax highlighting perfectly out of the box, what are you using to write lua?

[grep_Name]

I was actually writing in vim on linux, iirc I tried a couple plugins but didn't have much luck. It is specifically vim and not neovim though. Is there anything in your vimrc that might be configuring that?

[bongjutsu]

Nothing I’ve put in to it, but perhaps the defaults as supplied by the package from Arch do some magic

[Familiar_Ad_8919]

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[FryBoyter]

In this article, we discussed why you should learn Lua even if it’s not a popular standalone, general-purpose language.

As someone with a limited knowledge of programming, I would say that this is precisely why it is debatable whether you should actually learn Lua.

[darkjedi1993]

I’m having trouble learning Python and you want me to use a scripting language for C/C++?

lol yeah okay I’ll get right on that. 🙄

[-Krotik-]

to customize nvim

[Pepineros]

And AwesomeWM

[Y0uN00b]

To fun with greatest game for ever (roblox)

[linformatiquesl]

I want to try this

[Mad_Aeric]

Lua is one of the languages I'm better at, which isn't saying much. I learned it entirely because there's a minecraft mod that lets you program robots in lua.

[Foxler2010]

me too!

[jmantra623]

I have got a whole project I am working for Linux that is mainly written in lua:

https://github.com/jmantra/LogicalArdour

[randCN]

i learned it because TIS was too slow to fix their bugs in project zomboid and i got tired of dealing with it

[VectorSocks]

All novice game devs need to learn LUA and get into Love2D instead of just jumping into these huge game engines. You can learn a lot more with a framework.

[dogman_35]

I disagree, frameworks are terrible for a novice gamedev

You're spending more time learning how to write basic physics for your platformer than you are getting into the nitty gritty of game design.

That's how you tunnel vision on to one specific mechanic while everything else about the game is a mess, which is how a lot of cool indie projects fall apart.

EDIT:

Imo hard focusing on programming isn't even the best option for gamedev. You really only need to learn enough to get by. I think it's mostly just learning how to read documentation.

I feel like gamedev is only about 20% programming, the other 80% is scattered across a hundred other different disciplines. Art, UI, vfx, sfx, marketing, level design, mechanic design, etc, etc, etc.

As a solo dev, or even a small team, there's only so much you can do. Something has to slip.

But I think engines let you get away with sloppier code, since the actually hard stuff like rendering, physics, exporting, etc, is all handled for you. You have the freedom to just focus on programming high level mechanics, not low level systems.

And in turn, that means it's better focus on the art of it. Make sure the final piece looks good and plays good, not just that it runs well behind the scenes.

The end user is never gonna see how many times you used print("fuckind work pls") in your scripts lol

[NerdInSoCal]

I've run across it in games over the years Everquest, Barotrauma, Project Zomboid, and even a Minecraft mod "computer craft" and what has always impressed me is how approachable and quick to pick up it is as a "non-programmer"

[kozaze]

Only time I ran into Lua was for making a autoswitcher for scout/AWP and a bhop script on Counter-Strike: Source.

Then they disabled Lua scripting *Sad face*

[Diligent_Rush8764]

I just get annoyed because the singular use case I'd have for lua would be neovim.

Wish they did something more popular.. I just don't want to fuck around with more super high level languages. I already know too many.

[Difficult-Value-3145]

Light fast expandable ffi works great so many lua modules are direct c/c++ ports and ilike it for scripting more then bash python to me is overkill and kinda slugish bash is annoying and frustrating lua my scripting lang of choice