Comment by CapsAdmin
11 hours ago
It sounds like you're trying to articulate why you don't like Lua, but it seems to just boil down to syntax and semantics unfamiliarity?
I see this argument a lot with Lua. People simply don't like its syntax because we live in a world where C style syntax is more common, and the departure from that seem unnecessary. So going "well actually, in 1992 when Lua was made, C style syntax was more unfamiliar" won't help, because in the current year, C syntax is more familiar.
The first language I learned was Lua, and because of that it seems to have a special place in my heart or something. The reason for this is because in around 2006, the sandbox game "Garry's Mod" was extended with scripting support and chose Lua for seemingly the same reasons as Redis.
The game's author famously didn't like Lua, its unfamiliarity, its syntax, etc. He even modified it to add C style comments and operators. His new sandbox game "s&box" is based on C#, which is the language closest to his heart I think.
The point I'm trying to make is just that Lua is familiar to me and not to you for seemingly no objective reason. Had Garry chosen a different language, I would likely have a different favorite language, and Lua would feel unfamiliar and strange to me.
GP is the creator of Redis. I would imagine he knows Lua well given that Redis has embedded it for around a decade.
In that case, my point about Garry not liking Lua despite choosing it for Garrysmod, for seemingly the same reason as antirez is very appropriate.
I haven't read antirez'/redis' opinions about Lua, so I'm just going off of his post.
In contrast I do know more about what Garry's opinion on Lua is as I've read his thoughts on it over many years. It ultimately boils down to what antirez said. He just doesn't like it, it's too unfamiliar for seemingly no intentional reason.
But Lua is very much an intentionally designed language, driven in cathedral-style development by a bunch of professors who seem to obsess about language design. Some people like it, some people don't, but over 15 years of talking about Lua to other developers, "I don't like the syntax" is ultimately the fundamental reason I hear from developers.
So my main point is that it just feels arbitrary. I'm confident the main reason I like Lua is because garry's mod chose to implement it. Had it been "MicroQuickJS", Lua would likely feel unfamiliar to me as well.