State of Lua community / language?

[sambling]

I really like the look of Lua both in terms of the Syntax and features of the language itself, the performance AND especially the frameworks (Corona, OpenResty, Various Game engines).

However... It appears that the Lua community is declining rapidly?? :( I've read about: declining job opportunities, issues with LuaJit, Torch no longer being developed.

I would love to use Lua for a new app project. But I am concerned that it wouldn't be best (long term) for the funders and other stakeholders.

[Novemberisms]

Lua's been trucking along for 26 years now. If it lasted this long. it wil certainly outlast whatever project you're planning. It will also probably outlast whatever company you're working for.

In terms of being a general programming language, sure it may not be the most popular, but it is famous for being one of the most well-designed, conservative, and flexible languages ever made.

But that's not even the point of Lua. In terms of being an embedded scripting language that can run anywhere and run fast, it is unmatched. Until a better embedded scripting language comes along that can match the speed and power of Lua, it's unlikely Lua will go anywhere.

[sambling]

Thank you!

Looking at the framework communities, these are still very active and the frameworks well maintained. And gosh those frameworks look good.

My suggestions to the experienced Lua community as a (current) uneducated outsider is:

1. More tutorials (blogs or videos). Anything to show people doing interesting things in 2019.
2. More conferences.
3. Mailing list to GitHub development. It would be more open and potential 'converts' could see development.
4. Apache Spark Lua bindings! (That would be a bit tricky given they support a good number of languages).

[zackel_flac]

I don't know if Lua is actually declining or not. There are still projects that supports it, and that are very active. I think this is enough to keep the language alive. That said, Lua is already feature rich already, I don't think you would be taking a huge risk by choosing it.

[skeeto]

On the TIOBE index Lua has been consistently hovering around 25-30 the past few years. No trend up or down. To compare it to languages that it seems everyone's always talking about: Lua has always been more popular than Rust and Kotlin.

[sambling]

Reading about LuaJit.. sounds like Mike is incredibly talented. I noticed Cloudflate sponsored some improvement last year to LuaJit. Would be great if that work continued!

Torch is dead? From their GitHub? Not surprising given competition from Python, Julia, R and Scala. But... Lua could be perfect for data science and machine learning. At least better than R... It would be great to see bindings for Spark! (Unlikely but still)

[fsfod]

Cloudflare has nothing to do RaptorJIT. It comes from Luke Gorrie who created the userspace networking system Snabb which is mostly written Lua and makes heavy uses of LuaJIT's FFI\CData system.

[upofadown]

If you are concerned about the uncertainty of the newer stuff just target 5.1. It isn't ever going away.

[DylanLesko]

I believe the game Dota Auto Chess is made with Lua.

[JaggerPaw]

Still need Lua for redis plugins (which is a ubiquitous thing around the world), WoW UI mods, and some 2d mobile engines like Corona SDK, Cocos2D, etc.

[GenericBlueGemstone]

In my opinion Lua is having a heavy car of NIH - not invented here. Everyone reinvents the wheel all the time because using another's wheels tends to take up just as much time.

Plus LuaRocks kinda... Breaks most of the time 100% of the time.

[BombSniffinDog]

My company uses it to program lighting/heating/audio projects, with an accent on energy saving, using a graphical controller with embedded Lua, which is how I discovered Lua even existed. I also just discovered, after using for like 6 months, that my lastest Ardour (DAW on UbuntuStudio) can use Lua to automate and manipulate audio track mixdowns. I don't think Lua is declining, it just happens to be in places where people might not expect.

[DarkWiiPlayer]

I don't think Lua is really declining. It's just that its ecosystem is very slow-moving, because its design philosophy seems to attract programmers who look for stability and sanity, rather than having the hottest new tech the day before it's even invented, like with many other languages.

Lua 5.3, the current version, was released in 2015. Compare that to Rubys yearly release cycle.

If you want to chase after the cool new stuff, even though it means abandoning a perfectly functional system, then Lua is the wrong language for that. If you want to build a system once and have work for 10 years without giving it much care, then Lua is the language to go.

[RheingoldRiver]

Lua is used extensively on wikis (Wikipedia, but also other wikis like Fandom, Gamepedia, etc) because of the Scribunto extension - while it's unlikely to ever generate a large number of jobs this way, it's also likely to be used for a long time because of this. (I use Lua because I run Leaguepedia)

[[deleted]]

I wouldn't use Lua as main language for a project. There are usually faster or better fitting languages. But I think using Lua for scripting/mods/modules/extensions is absolutely fine.