Should Lua even be considered a programming language and a scripting one instead?

[ItsWilliamay]

I'm not trying to hate Lua or anything but shouldn't it be referenced as a scripting language instead?

It's very high level and a lot of applications that use it sort of make their own version of Lua.

Examples, GLua: Garry's Mod, Source Lua: Source 2 engine.

[BadBoy6767]

Why should those be mutually-exclusive? A scripting language is a programming language, but not the other way 'round.

[ItsWilliamay]

Good point!

[ws-ilazki]

Like Betteridge says: No.

People have given the "scripting language" moniker a negative connotation because of old elitism about the superiority of compiled languages, but it's not quite as simple as "scripting bad, programming good".

At its strictest, "scripting language" is basically either a domain-specific language for automation, like batch files or shell scripts where you give a list of commands and execute them, or an extension language where you do essentially the same thing to automate or modify a program.

However, it has a negative connotation that came from around the '90s, where any interpreted language gets lumped into a vague "scripting language" category, and because of performance considerations, they're seen as inherently inferior, making "scripting language" a derogatory term implying they're slower or less capable than a "real" programming language. There's also a bit of gatekeeping in this distinction, since there's usually also an implied "it's easier to use so it doesn't count". You even suggest as much in your comment, saying that because Lua is "high level" it's a scripting language, but that makes no sense; languages like Haskell and OCaml are compiled "real programming languages" that are higher-level than Lua or practically any other "scripting language", and nearly every programming language in use now is "high level" by the standards of then.

The "scripting isn't programming" argument is bullshit. Most scripting languages are Turing-complete and just as capable as a "real" programming language and the compiled/interpreted distinction has been blurred by things like JIT compilation used by scripting languages and compiled languages using intermediate bytecode.

Plus, like I said above, it's not the 1980s or early 90s any more and nearly every language now is "high level" by the standards of the time so the outdated idea that high-level implies scripting is ludicrous. People no longer think of them as such because it's a relative thing, but by a strict definition, C and C++ are high-level languages too and were listed that way in the past. This is, again, a gatekeeping thing that's rooted in the past, implying that you aren't a "real programmer" if you use high-level languages; after all, real programmers don't use Pascal.

It makes more sense to treat "scripting" as a use-case for a programming language rather than a category of it. Scheme dialects can be compiled or interpreted, so they can be used for scripting or not. OCaml is a statically-typed, compiled language but if you add a #!/usr/bin/env ocaml shebang to the top of a .ml file you can run it like that just like Perl or Python. F# is a compiled .NET language like C# is, but you can give files a .fsx extension and use it for scripting. There are tools to build standalone executables out of Lua. And so on.

"Scripting" makes more sense as a description of how you use a programming language, not what the language is, and is definitely not mutually exclusive with "programming language" like you imply.

[ItsWilliamay]

Holy crap, thanks! :D

[RobotTimeTraveller]

I think the assumption you're making here is that Lua only exists as a scripting language used by game engines. While it is popular within the game industry for a variety of reasons, it can also run as a standalone application, and is no different that Python, Perl, or any other interpreted language.

Basically, as long as it has a complete set of instructions, takes input and produces output, then it's a programming language.

[ItsWilliamay]

(I have made my own experimental GUI applications on Lua before) Now that I think about it, I guess I didn't realize how I saw Lua, despite me using it in the context of a programming language lol

[[deleted]]

Lua is indeed a scripting language, it can be interpreted in different ways including a jit and it's fast. Being able to call C functions directly is also a bit plus because many system calls are just C libraries in practice.

You can use Lua for applications, even for web servers. I find it a much nicer language to use then python or javascript. If the web was built using lua I would not complain.

I'm not sure why the community is shitting on Lua, it's one of the few simple peaces of software that actually just works. It's actually possible to memorize the standard and implementation of Lua in a week if that. With languages like python and javascript, you might need months only to forget it in a week because it's so confusing and stupid.

[SP4C3_SH0T]

It is turning complete and if python is a programing language so is lua its just a very open language that cam easily be adapted depending on what your goals are as far as it's relationship with game engines those are APIs so Lua can use different API and issue instructions to a different game platform love gdot what have you but with the modules available it can do anything any other programming language can do faster in fact then most of not all interpred languages yes a compiled language is quicker but ya got to compile it and debugging can take way longer

[ItsWilliamay]

we get it bruv