is lua easier than javascript


I've done a few Ludum Dare entries with LOVE and it really is a snap compared to working with C and OpenGL directly. Either way this is FiveM. I think we could use a reasonable middleground between the awesome standard libraries of Python and Java and the ocean of tiny packages of Rust and Javascript. Using "it's easier for new users" is not a good argument for a good programming language. I don't think I complained about the Lua interpreter itself? However, using the LuaJIT compiler, which speeds rival codes, can result in Lua being made faster, which is known as further improvement. Perhaps there was not a race. Chez doesn't make standalone executables though, because Chez is jitted. My switch is for general use. 0 vs 1 based arrays. Another benefit of Lua is that it performs better than any other language, but it is not as quick as a simple loop with a single function call, which runs slower when compared to Javascript. lua performs admirably with its lightweight, high-speed execution. What are you using it for? Being tied to the web means it is evolving slowly. The majority of 146 developers who have used C++ choose it because it offers superior performance, while 19 developers chose Lua because of its fast learning curve. close to real-world scenarios. It may be the fastest Scheme. Even if I WAS to select a different language to use on FiveM it wouldnt be JS directly. The Lua libraries, though, expect arrays to start at one, so you're kind of pushed into it. Their API docs aren't complete at all; information on the web is sparse and out-dated. Continue is very much necessary in loops like this, unless you want some deeply nested code: Garry Newman blogged a bit about this too.

Chez compiles to native binaries that run win the chez runtime (so not stand-alone). Lua is an open source tool that has 1.26K GitHub stars and 437 GitHub forks as of June 30, 2014. Despite its age, Lua has flatlined rather than declined, indicating that it is not yet dead despite its popularity. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. > I guess the lack of round function is surprising too, but the explanations I see online about it being a minimalism and ease of implementation make sense. I have read those implementations and they are all unsatisfying: 1) The "minimalism" argument: How is that consistent with the existence of math.deg() and math.rad()? I think Node was in large successful because web developers already have to use JavaScript so the promise of unifying on one language and set of libraries is appealing to many. With Lua, C#, JS / TS all being used in the same environment I can do everything in Lua that C# and JS / TS can do. But, we cant really make this to work, because of problems that are kinda weird, like require is not defined or exports problem. No more vacant rooftops and lifeless lounges not here in Capitol Hill. Want more? This one, while well intentioned, seems to break a lot of basic ideas in computer science. A Java-centric implementation of lua vm designed to leverage the most common Java features. It'd be nice if a package-managed language could import the huge awesome standard library, automatically drop whatever goes unused, and that mechanism worked well enough that everyone but the most restricted embedded programmers were fine with it. It's the wrong word. They refer to it as a "incremental native compiler". it's funny your numbered list of reasons lua's bad starts with the fact that array indices start at one by convention in lua, and the index for that first complaint is 1. I have threads that I can start and stop. The fact that they are dynamically typed programming languages, but not very far, speaks volumes about their capabilities. Incremental compilation happens at runtime. WTF? I started looking into embedding V8 after you posted this and you are right - I would not use javascript in any project requiring embedding, not until the binding schemes are more mature. To be clear, Im not calling Clojure 1-indexed: I provided nth and first as examples of contrasting 0- and 1-based conventions; in this case within the same language. Thank U, Next. I really love your point on not defining a language better or worse than others, i think in a related way because i think that that classification depends on the context of the app and the system you are working with. Well, sure, but it is not what we mostly consider a JIT. Native threads? It is designed around extending application -- and itself. It's a very strange, yet usable library. Bearing in mind tracing JITs came about in the 70s, but JITs themselves are about a decade older. A library like Boost::Python for V8 would be fantastic on so many levels. I started using JavaScript in my latest window manager after first using Lua. Handle json requests and respond to them with Lua, and youre good to go. Another couple of cases I run into are Postgres arrays, and switching between first, second, and nth in Clojure. For me it was the fact that the array ends at the first 'nil' you store in it. How Tech Can Help You Transform Your Home Into The Best Workout Spot, Here is How The Internet Can Be Used to Learn About Skincare, 7 Ways Technology Can Help You Lose Weight. Because of its speed, Lua is an extremely popular programming language in the gaming market (as well as in the Python market). Both are easier to manually implement and less rarely used than round(). [0], > Chez Scheme compiles source forms as it sees them to machine code before evaluating them, i.e., "just in time." Lua's C API is about as straight forward as you can get and makes embedding a breeze. 3) Pressing arrays into hashtables-as-arrays-but-not-really is a very bad, unnecessary design decision with few upsides and many downsides. WoW among many others. Javascript and Lua have a lot in common, so much so that anything I can think to do in Lua I can do in Javascript. Most often, this consists of source code or more commonly bytecode translation to machine code, which is then executed directly. [1] https://www.scheme.com/csug8/use.html. Any Lua programmers here able to recommend learning the language, though? It's not enough for me to care though. You are more than likely going to spend time working full stack apps (frontend or backend or even both) using JS. Since Lua arrays are just tables with numerical keys, couldnt you just start at 0 if thats your preference? The language is so old that its place seems to be set and unlikely to change. Lua won, because of the easy integration with C and it's general lightness. non-parallelized programs, the overhead is from GC or JIT compiler, Is there any flavor of lisp that is close to luajit performances and still small? Lua Rocks package manager includes basically every library you could want. Love2D, an open source framework for building 2D and 3D world games, and Roblox, an open source framework for building 3D world games, are two examples of open source frameworks for Lua. I think it's a fair choice and I don't think a core library's choice should be an argument to judge the whole language. Lua, a robust, efficient, lightweight, embeddable scripting language, is an excellent choice for embedded applications. Doesn't it sound strange to ear "the first item in an array has index 0" ? > JIT compilation is a combination of the two traditional approaches to translation to machine code ahead-of-time compilation (AOT), and interpretation and combines some advantages and drawbacks of both. Chez compiles all code prior to execution and does not do any dynamic code generation during runtime. It doesn't matter if either language might not be competitive with Lua or any other language in terms of design / features. Has Improved Tech Made Cosmetic Procedures Safer Than Ever? [2] Lua will just print the address of the hashtable, which is completely useless if you want to see its contents. I evaluated Lua vs Python for use in a simulation engine as a scripting language for extending behaviors of stuff. Lua has been used for web development for a long time, and its use is well known, with websites such as TaoBao, a Chinese online shopping website with over 760 million listings on Alexa and ranks 11 globally, as well as Cloudflare, itch.io, mail.ru, Ma. It also includes a compiler, a profiler, a great debugger, live memory-introspection, and an enhanced REPL [2] that can dump out it's definitions and any comments into a lovely Scheme file. Its a shame to dismiss the entire language due to what one might argue is a minor aspect. optimized chez (optimize-level 3) where I have spent quite some time optimizing the code, is generally within 2-5x of optimized C. You can implement a lambda style of programming in lua. Big applications? That you can't just say "import module" and have many modules available? ), [x86_64][2 cores] Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8370C CPU @ 2.80GHz (Model 106). As a result, developers prefer Java because they have great libraries, whereas Lua was chosen based on its fast learning curve. If you were to write an idiomatic Javascript program, you would do the same thing you would with Lua. {} vs begin/end. You dont know #Jack yet. Does it have native threads, no GIL? As for now yeah, those are the errors we are getting, as far as i know these could be a problem of Node or the webpack used for the resource. Zero-indexed arrays are one of those language design dogmas that are simply set in stone, really awkward to switch between languages when Lua has such a fundamental difference of opinion. LOVE is looking better and better as they get more sophisticated OpenGL support and (finally) less buggy physics. All of my Lua code uses zero based arrays. How can a language offer such a bad support for its most important datastructure? V8 is faster than the stock Lua implementation, but slower than LuaJIT. Youll love it here, we promise. Let me quote Andy Keep (akeep on github. It is just fast enough that AOT compilation isn't a noticeable delay even at the repl. Press J to jump to the feed. It is still widely used in gaming and web services, but it has performed poorly in terms of community engagement and job market prospects. Totally. Javascript may be getting fast, but it is going nowhere as far as the language is concerned. It is interpreted, while Lua runs via a VM. What has Python actual won over Lua that any other language hasn't won? Mongoose OS (iot OS) [0] uses embedded Javascript. The Lua programming language is a powerful, lightweight, and fast scripting language that can be embedded. I agree completely with points 5 and 6; nothing to add there :). I know, generic questions, but I am actually considering learning lua. Especially in FiveM or RedM. They don't have to, since Lua tables are hash sets and you can use anything as a key. It integrates seamlessly with C and for an interpreted language its super efficient. Its part of how they make the language so clean, but it makes it difficult to build an ecosystem around. That's because the first nil in a hashtable demarks the end of an array. To being honest i didnt knew Gmod or Roblox used Lua, for me lua was a language i had to learn to start working with some fivem resources. English is the worst programming language :). Gambit-C [0]. I do still love Lua and I probably mislabeled this post when I made it. A language is a type of technology stack that is associated with JavaScript and Lua. Syntactical issues are not so bad IMO, default scoping and version incompatibility between 5.1/5.2/5.3 are much bigger. It's not my opinion. or should i focus my time on improving my lua skills and use the js knowledge to improve ui / nui related resources ? I was able to get more done, more quickly in Python, even though I, from an aesthetic standpoint, though Lua was neater. The lack of a large standard library and a decent package manager were key in my mind. intrinsics via libraries is not counted), * -ffi in a file name stands for non-stdlib The downside is you have to add '-1' in a few places, but it's not as many as you'd think. You can read the Lua source code in C and comprehend a lot of it in a weekend. I grew up on C programming. Even then with me using Lua right now. My knowledge of Lua is limited, however, so could you elaborate on the comparison criteria? Should i use Javascript or Lua? [1]. It is nice to embed though, and is a lot faster than python for things that isn't only using python things that are implemented in c. I have found LuaJIT to be about that fast as well, but with quite a lot of exceptions where it is within 1.5x of C. I would say it is still the fastest dynamic language implementation. Using a simulation machine or computer, you can compile the Lua and Python languages into byte code and run them. Prior to 5.3, anyone with a usecase that really necessitated bitwise operations could easily add them with a dozen lines of C code, or they could use LuaJIT which has offered bitops for some time. thumb2 The "JIT" part is just an AOT compile at runtime, without most of the nice things that we generally consider being a JIT. table[0] = "foo" is valid and works. Scripting for your programs or just to make stuff with? They wanted Lua to be easy for non-programmers who don't naturally count from zero. Since its for macOS the JavaScriptCore framework was already built in and uses the latest syntax. It provides an array of procedural, object-oriented, functional, and data-driven programming options. : non-programmers) count. Similarly, you might get an array argument from a caller, check its length (4 elements), append a single value, and suddenly your array has 10 elements, instead of 5! Probably Modula-2, but the timeframe would not exclude Modula-3 as a possibility, though I suppose it doesn't really matter. It is the least difficult programming language to learn, and because it is so easy to pick up, it is the best language to begin with for children and beginners alike. This is my preference, but maybe Lua was too early for this strategy to succeed. Some magma reaches the Earths surface via vents and fissures. (Usage of simd Actually, 0 indexed arrays are prevalent in the C-syntax family only because of pointer arithmetic: a C compiler multiplies the index by the size of a pointer to an item element and adds to the array base to get the pointer to the element. Totally agree with you. Do we at least agree that Chez does not generate code at runtime? I have all the functions I need and I even write classes in Lua to help with some of the more bloated systems my framework has. Leiningen gets you package management. You shouldn't use micro-benchmarks that test things rarely seen in actual programs to make definitive statements about their runtime performance. In racket such code has negligible performance impact because the runtime will generate native code "just in time" with optimizations deduced from run-time information. Doesn't officially support MinGW. I have been on FiveM since 2016 and I even had some knowledge before FiveM and even though I could apply for a job for frontend or backend web apps I dont want to because this is a hobby. But a lot bigger than LuaJIT, and probably not as fast. Then yeah sure I can see where you could compare other languages to which one could be better to use but in this sandbox environment There really isnt much to compare other than syntax and custom functions shipped with the language. [2] https://cisco.github.io/ChezScheme/csug9.5/use.html#./use:h2, > Whether compiling on the fly or precompiling, the compiler produces optimized machine code, with some optimization across separately compiled library boundaries. I actually just started playing with V8 (embedding it as a scripting language for a small game). Google Closure does a pretty good job at stripping unused code. I honestly don't know) is nice, and multiple return values are great (I miss this when I'm not working in Lua). usage, * (You may find time < time(user) + time(sys) for some There are several languages tools available in addition to Java and Lua. > it's not because it's designed to be easily embeddable that it doesn't work just fine on its own. OpenResty and Lapis are quite capable in the web space, but they havent seen widespread adoption. Besides all of that we cant find much documentation on the theme (i mean, yeah there are a lot of natives with its description and a couple of examples in lua and js or lua and c#, but when seeking for errors or something related we found none). I understand not including ++ (Python) to not enforce 1 as a standard value, but it also doesn't seem to help anyone. Lua is much more of a glue language, i.e. This is an unpopular opinion, but I wish Lua had won against python. How does lua compare in this regard, is it as stagnant? No but it has coroutines. The big reason I like Python is that it doesn't try too much to be elegant, and happily creates specific functions for specific usages. No strong C++ binding libraries (yet). None of them seemed well rounded, though, so I'm having to just write my own (which is fun, so shrugs). It is a robust, lightweight, and embeddable scripting language that supports a wide range of programming methods, including procedural, object-oriented, functional, and data-driven methods. Weve got kegerator space; weve got a retractable awning because (its the best kept secret) Seattle actually gets a lot of sun; weve got a mini-fridge to chill that ros; weve got BBQ grills, fire pits, and even Belgian heaters. Lua should just attach itself via script converters to that ecosystem and convince via time and better syntax the unwashed masses. The Wikipedia page supports my view. Overall, I'd say it's great to have the freedom of choice! 2) The "ease of implementation" argument: The C standard library actually provides a round() function, so binding it would be negligible in terms of both resources and implementation effort. I mean, JS maybe isnt the easiest language between him and LUA, but its the one with more future (its more probably you end up working with JS in a company than LUA; i say this because im a programmer and learn LUA doesnt really make new job opportunities). I guess the lack of round function is surprising too, but the explanations I see online about it being a minimalism and ease of implementation make sense. How does the lua(jit) stdlib compare to javascript's? FFI The term used in C for arrays should be called an offset, not an index. why the heck not have both? magma is lighter than solid rock, so it rises and collects in magma chambers. Python is a scripting language, whereas Lua is a light-weight, portable, and fast-learnable language. That this bubbled up, sums up the true power of javascript. ClojureScript is powered by Google Closure. A volcano is said to have erupted. Rather than including every library under the sun in the standard lib, Lua is compact and the entire compiled binary is measured in kilobytes. I might still use Lua if I'm embedding a scripting language in a native application. His game used Lua extensively, but he changed his opinion about it: https://garry.tv/2014/08/16/i-fell-out-of-love-with-lua/. Its realistically YOUR personal preference. Luaj, a lua interpreter based on the 5.2 version, is implemented using this interpreter. What is Lua? It's also how array indexes are defined in mathematics.

Lua is just easier out of the box. Still, I believe Dijkstra has it right and mathematicians have been doing it wrong. Lua is a great language; Python is a great language. We use cookies on our websites for a number of purposes, including analytics and performance, functionality and advertising. I think Lua beats V8 on all the problems I listed, especially with regards to documentation and stability of the API. At compile time, chez has no way to know whether c is positive or negative (if it is set at runtime), thus making each iteration check whether c is positive or negative. Lua doesnt even include proper object oriented programming, but is so powerful you can add support for it quite easily, and is a good learning experience for aspiring Lua programmers. It's a R6RS Scheme, so bigger, but Chez has much better embedding support, is backed by Cisco instead of a single dev. Its performant when written correctly. But I always reach to Python because of it's pure, raw usability. SBCL compiles code fast enough to not have a distinct compilation step for most software in a way similar to chez and no one would consider it a JIT. The V8 implementation is free and on par with Lua's in terms of code quality. This post contains activity. It is important to note that this backend is a pure jsonrpc backend, so it does not generate html like PHP or cgi. Furthermore, games can be used to teach it in a fun and exciting manner. I think Python's standard library is super underestimated. However, I think I'll just try CoffeeScript for nicer syntax and write my own basic library for now. Sure you can if you have a distribution that provides them, which I think is the kind of thing that the previous comment was referring to. Replacing (first coll) by (nth 1 coll) in clojure happens to me more often than I'd like to admit, I mostly write in Java for work. Im asking this, because im working with other devs on trying to make a custom framework built in javascript that uses mongodb. [0], [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation. > Well, sure, but it is not what we mostly consider a JIT. I would agree with this point in respect to Python, but not Node. Because I am very certain it does not (I have spent a lot of time with the chez codebase). We called 2^10 a kilobyte too, even though kilo means 10^3. I have embedded both lua and v8, and I consider v8 simpler in terms of getting it to work with your code. And when i was talking of future jobs i had clearly on mind that just developing for fivem wont gave you a good frontend / backend job, my point on that was that if you started learning that you could easily start learning full stack development or new frameworks, and from there have some really good bases to apply for a job with a experience supported by your projects. Well, that's how normal people (i.e. There were a lot of reasons for it. And i dont think LUA has the best performance for working with fivem, being honest i would say the best is C# but i cant prove that. Lua was literally built for this. The languages are really comparable in the CFX projects because they are all embedded for the same purpose. You're welcome to download and use spritely under the terms of the license, but please don't download the images or any other material from this site without prior permission. Zero should be in the set of natural numbers and the traditional definition (before the 19th century) is wrong. Clojure being a lisp also has different enough syntax it is easier to jump back and forth because you're doing way more context switching. [1] But it does have functions to convert degrees to radians and back. Cisco says Chez compiles code just before it uses it, at runtime: > Chez Scheme compiles source forms as it sees them to machine code before evaluating them, i.e., "just in time.". I've vouched for as many as seemed valid. HERE, * -m in a file name stands for multi-threading or multi-processing, * -i in a file name stands for direct intrinsics usage. Few problems so far: Almost no documentation -- This is the worst. If you are into language design, Lua is a language worth studying and understanding. Although I'd really need to be convinced. x += y is more elegant than x = x+y. How is that more important than round()?! Back to the good old high school days, I spent 2 years learning programming in Pascal (yes, Turbo Pascal for DOS!