book

Masterminds of Programming

by Federico Biancuzzi, Chromatic

March 2009

Intermediate to advanced

496 pages

18h 40m

English

O'Reilly Media, Inc.

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Organization of the MaterialConventions Used in This BookHow to Contact UsSafari® Books Online
Design DecisionsUsing the LanguageOOP and ConcurrencyFutureTeaching
The Pythonic WayThe Good ProgrammerMultiple PythonsExpedients and Experience
Paper and PencilElementary PrinciplesParallelismLegacy
The Forth Language and Language DesignHardwareApplication Design
The Goals Behind BASICCompiler DesignLanguage and Programming PracticeLanguage DesignWork Goals
The Life of AlgorithmsLanguage DesignUnix and Its CultureThe Role of DocumentationComputer ScienceBreeding Little LanguagesDesigning a New LanguageLegacy CultureTransformative TechnologiesBits That Change the UniverseTheory and PracticeWaiting for a BreakthroughProgramming by Example
The Power of ScriptingExperienceLanguage Design

A Functional TeamTrajectory of Functional ProgrammingThe Haskell LanguageSpreading (Functional) EducationFormalism and Evolution
The Soundness of TheoremsThe Theory of MeaningBeyond Informatics
A Seminal PaperThe LanguageFeedback and EvolutionXQuery and XML
Engineering Objective-CGrowing a LanguageEducation and TrainingProject Management and Legacy SoftwareObjective-C and Other LanguagesComponents, Sand, and BricksQuality As an Economic PhenomenonEducation
Power or SimplicityA Matter of TasteConcurrencyDesigning a LanguageFeedback Loop
Language and DesignGrowing a LanguageC#The Future of Computer Science
Learning and TeachingThe Role of the PeopleUMLKnowledgeBe Ready for ChangeUsing UMLLayers and LanguagesA Bit of ReusabilitySymmetric RelationshipsUMLLanguage DesignTraining DevelopersCreativity, Refinement, and Patterns
The Language of RevolutionsLanguageCommunityEvolution and Revolution
Designed to LastResearch and EducationInterfaces to LongevityStandard Wishes
An Inspired AfternoonReusability and GenericityProofreading LanguagesManaging Growth and Evolution

Content preview from Masterminds of Programming

Chapter 7. Lua

Lua is a very small, self-contained dynamic language created by Roberto Ierusalimschy, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo, and Waldemar Celes in 1993. Lua’s small set of powerful features and easy-to-use C API make the language easy to embed and extend to express domain-specific concepts. Lua is prominent in the world of proprietary software, where games such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and Crytek GmbH’s Crysis, as well as Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom, use it for scripting and UI work. Its predecessors are Lisp, Scheme, and perhaps AWK; it has design similarities to JavaScript, Icon, and Tcl.

The Power of Scripting

How do you define Lua?

Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo: An embeddable, lightweight, fast, powerful scripting language.

Roberto Ierusalimschy: Unfortunately, more and more people use “scripting language” as a synonym for “dynamic language.” Nowadays even Erlang or Scheme are called scripting languages. That is sad, because we lose the precision to describe a particular class of dynamic languages. Lua is a scripting language in the original meaning of the expression. A language to control other components, usually written in another language.

What should people keep in mind when designing software with Lua?

Luiz: That there probably is a Lua way of doing things. It’s not recommended to try to emulate all practices from other languages. You have to really use the features of your language, although I guess that is true for any language. In the case of Lua, those features ...