Lua - A Comment

Though I've been considering to begin taking a closer look at EFL WebKit potentially for application with Common Lisp, but presently I've become somewhat distracted of the network configuration on my small LAN. Towards considering a scripting language -- alternate to SH -- for automating a time-based iterative function on the LAN gateway, I've not considered Common Lisp as an option for this application. Though I think Common Lisp has a lot to offer to systems programming, but I think it may be a little much to apply a complete Common Lisp implementation for simply automating such a function on the LAN gateway.

Considering scripting languages, I'm young enough in years to remember when PERL was first becoming a popular scripting language. I remember, likewise, my own difficulty with making sense of the affability with which PERL's baroque syntax was presented, in popular discourse. Presently, I don't believe a person  should ever have to indulge in any manner of intellectual gymnastics, if to understand the syntax and semantics of an interpreted programming language. I don't have any great sense of appreciation about the eclectic nature of PERL. Candidly, I think it's more a novelty than a necessity. I don't find it to be a particularly helpful novelty, either.

So, I'm also going to take a break from so much as considering to develop any applications of Common Lisp. I'm sure Common Lisp is great for making adventures about computer science.

I've glanced at the Ruby language. I've heard that Ruby is applied in Puppet Labs' Puppet tools. Not to rain on anyone's fair, as far as scripting languages, I'm thinking to favor Lua instead.

Lua is a programming language with a few applications that I know of. The first one I've thought of, of late, has been the application of Lua in the block-oriented builder game universe of the Minetest platform. Then again, there's also the Texas Instruments N-Spire graphing calculators, which feature a Lua interpreter. Even in this era of the Phablet computer, I think that the N-Spire calculators are some really profound calculators. I'm impressed with their possible applications in laboratory science and in mathematics.

This evening, I've also found a couple of implementations of Lua onto CORBA, and a note about a Lua scripting extension for Nginx. The latter could be of use as towards developing a manner of a "Web Social" presentation model onto Minetest, but that's in looking ahead.

Searching the FreeBSD baseline packages repository, I see that there are a number of FreeBSD ports available for programming with Lua. Towards adopting Lua in integrated development environments, there's also an Lua-mode for Emacs, and -- in the Eclipse IDE -- there's also the Lua Development Tools platform, previously Koneki.

There are a number of books about programming with Lua, at Safari Books Online. Reader's interests may vary.

There are also Lua interpreters available on the Android platform.

So, it should be to a great lot of fun. Why, then, am I writing a web log article instead of writing my first lines of Lua code?  Is it that I am bewildered that Common Lisp, for all its Turing Completeness, still does not re-emerge any further from its AI Winter in Comp. Sci academia and into the commercial market? Am I perhaps a bit disconcerted by the character of same Comp Sci academia, itself, in some that I have seen of the same, and way too personally so?

I think both of those are why I would like to write a while longer, before studying much more in detail about Lua -- but of such a rough time veritably on the dark side of the moon, what is there to every write usefully of it?

Not a lot.