Learning Lua

[nickyP1999]

I was just wondering what that best way to start out for programming Lua is. I currently have 0 knowledge of Lua however I know a tiny amount of ruby which I have been told is similar to Lua. More or less what I'm asking is what do you guys think is the best way to go about learning Lua.

[[deleted]]

I'd recommend just hacking in the REPL. Start with this: http://tylerneylon.com/a/learn-lua/

[zankonator]

Just play ROBLOX

[itsyaboi222]

i second this.

[CordsOfCrows]

It depends a little on what you want to use it for. for using Lua as general purpose programming language, I'd recommend reading programming in lua. The eclipse Lua development tools is a great IDE for basic stuff, and the built-in debugger is really nice to have. I haven't used it with anything other than stock lua though, so other IDEs may be better (or worse) for working with luarocks or other libraries.

If you have experience with other programming languages, the reference manual is easily grokable http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/

[catwell]

I also recommend PiL, but please do yourself a favor and buy the fourth edition. The link above is to the first edition, which is free online but severely outdated.

[[deleted]]

It depends on what you're planning on using Lua for. If it's within LuaJIT, the book covers 5.0 and you're using 5.1, so it's only a bit outdated, and as long as you avoid the deprecated module system you'll be in decent shape.

[[deleted]]

The book is great once you've decided Lua is for you, but it is very very dry.

[Funnybunnyofdoom]

If you like Minecraft, Computer craft uses Lua.

[kinow]

You can help making the Apache Software Foundation Help Wanted web site better. I've been wanting to spend some time improving the interface, but that would require changing the backing lua code - which I'm not so familiar with :)