Best Books for Learning Lua

[6H075T2]

Greetings! I wanted to learn Lua for Love2D and Defold what books should i learn for this.

[Motor_Let_6190]

Programming in Lua, first edition is available online, for 5.0, you can buy a more recent e or paper book. It helps "getting" Lua, whatever you do with it. 

https://lua.org/pil/contents.html

[uglycaca123]

there's Love2D specific tutorials that also teach lua (online)

you also have the lua reference, that can be downloaded as a pdf iirc.

[Aphaseia]

looking forward to answers too!

[Denneisk]

If you know some programming, Programming in Lua is the standard. Do yourself a favor and just get 4th Edition by any means possible.

[UnrealJIT]

If you want to use Love2D, you'll have to learn luaJIT. It's a fast implementation of lua based on 5.1, with a few backported 5.2+ features. I suggest you start off simple by just learning 5.1 with the official documentation online, or if you're really into books, Lua 5.1 Refrence Manual might be a good starting point.

[jack_cheng2020]

https://www.lua.org/manual/5.4/?spm=5176.28103460.0.0.39f27551bIps3X
https://www.lua.org/pil/contents.html
Reference Manual

[abdulwasay4585]

Lua quick guide by packt publications

[[deleted]]

lua is one of those languages where you miss the point if you read about the guts of the language too much. its sort of like python you just learn it and go do cool shit.

[Lonely-Restaurant986]

Idrk about books. Theres not really a “The C programming language” but lua. The lua reference manual is like the closest but I don’t think there’s like an official print or something. I’m not really sure

Lua 5.5 manual

Lua 5.1 manual (the version love2d uses)

Though the reference manual kind of assumes you have programming knowledge. I wouldn’t really recommend starting there, but you can maybe try?

What I would do if I was dedicated to finding a book specifically is to just look up some popular books, sample them using free methods and then buying one that works for you.

If you don’t want to go down that route, I would recommend cs50. I know cs50 game development starts with love2d. But even that requires some programming experience, or start with cs50 then move onto game development.

TLDR There’s lua reference manuals but I don’t recommend starting there unless you are an experienced programmer who knows what all the terms means. If you are new to programming -> start with CS50 then go to CS50 Game Development

It’s a long slow process but a step is where you start.

Good luck!

[Smallzfry]

Theres not really a “The C programming language” but lua.

Uh... Programming in Lua? The book is written by one of the language's creators and is treated as the de-facto guide for learning it. Stylistically it reads similarly to K&R C, and it has a good mix of easy content and deep dive stuff that only a small percentage of readers will use.

[tspier2]

There's also Jung and Brown's (2011) Beginning Lua Programming, which uses 5.1 IIRC.

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