My 11 year old son made his own Roblox game with Lua. His game is a fps + puzzles. He got all of his school buddies to play and help him to grow the popularity, and his game passed 1 billion visits/plays. He uses Discord and organizes events, its so trippy to see your kid grow. One thing I noticed is we allowed our kids to play with tablets and Iphones starting at age 1 and quickly grew to PC's. He plays outside daily and has boys come over almost daily to do homework. We tried to allow our kids to make their own choices with a helping hand and I am only seeing wonderful results.

@piusijachi2763

6 күн бұрын

Congrats man cool kid

@thingsiplay

6 күн бұрын

Beautiful story, besides I don't like giving kids under 6 any smartphones or tablets to play with.

@lifelover69

6 күн бұрын

epic, little chad in the making

@stxnw

6 күн бұрын

@@thingsiplaythats why ur kid aint going places

@thingsiplay

6 күн бұрын

@@stxnw You have no idea what you are talking about.

Roblox actually did this a long time ago. It's mainly used to write ui code in their engine. Afaik they aren't actually using lua for their website? Also, fun fact, their fork of lua (called luau) has a type system and some other goodies such as compound assignment and continue statements in loops. It does this while still staying simple. Best part is that it's open source and you can use it freely (although their c API documentation is lacking). I haven't wanted to go back to vanilla lua since.

@BiffBish

5 күн бұрын

Luau is great, I’ve written tools for Unreal Engine that help integrate gameplay elements into lua for easier user generated content, their type system is more then enough for 99% of use cases

@v0xl

2 күн бұрын

the only reason I'm still not using luau in my stuff is that it lacks jit

@mxruben81

2 күн бұрын

@@v0xl it actually does have something like jit that they're calling native codegen. From my tests, its performance lands about in the middle between lua and luajit. It does especially good if there is a lot of math involved. The native codegen feature is still pretty new though and they've just started using type info for optimizations so I imagine it'll get a lot faster.

HERE WE GO, LADS: LUA MENTIONED

@1apostoli

6 күн бұрын

BRAZIL MENTIONED BRAZIL MENTIONED

@randerins

6 күн бұрын

LUINHA DO MEU CORASSEUN

@tuthui6253

5 күн бұрын

brazil tangentially mentioned

@thingsiplay

4 күн бұрын

GO MENTIONED

man, if only roblox didnt permaban linux as a platform

@realskyquest

5 күн бұрын

I feel you bro, the current option is to use waydroid the gapps ofc to not suffer from binary types. But still pc specific games are blocked

@jaydeep-p

4 күн бұрын

Who is playing roblox on Linux?

@realskyquest

4 күн бұрын

@jaydeep-p not sure, there are some people on reddit talking about this. But I don't play on linux

@RenderingUser

4 күн бұрын

@@jaydeep-p I used to play occasionally

Lua’s length operator is actually even *more special* than you think. #tbl returns the length of the table *only* when the table is a “sequence” (ie contains sequential keys only). If any keys are non-sequential (think nils or strings), the result of #tbl is undefined and up to implementations.

@marcusly3497

6 күн бұрын

Not undefined. It only counts things in the array portion. It uses a binary search, that is why it messes up at non sequential indices

@aarond309

5 күн бұрын

@@marcusly3497 Apparently this has been better defined since older lua versions; but according to the lua 5.4 Reference Manual Section 3.4.7 (I'd put a link, but KZread): "The length operator applied on a table returns a border in that table... a border is any positive integer index present in the table that is followed by an absent index, plus two limit cases: zero, when index 1 is absent; and the maximum value for an integer, when that index is present. Note that keys that are not positive integers do not interfere with borders... When t is not a sequence, #t can return any of its borders. (The exact one depends on details of the internal representation of the table, which in turn can depend on how the table was populated and the memory addresses of its non-numeric keys.)" So, while non-integer keys no longer produce undefined results, when your table has a hole, any one of the values followed by nil are legally allowed to be returned by the length operator. The "array section" and "hash section" are implementation details and are *not* present in the specification.

@isodoubIet

5 күн бұрын

This has to be the worst single feature I've ever seen in any non-joke language

Redis has embedded Lua, which lets you write Lua scripts that are atomic. Fun language to work with.

@harleyspeedthrust4013

5 күн бұрын

ive seen this in some of our production code at work but I've never had to work with it. lua really is a great embedded scripting language.

You better hope the cricket won't DMCA this video, he seems determined.

@JanJozefo

6 күн бұрын

Who?

@frost54311

6 күн бұрын

@@JanJozefo put headphones on, and you'll hear a cricket sound in the background

@JanJozefo

6 күн бұрын

​@@frost54311 lmao I hear it now. I always listen to these on my phone's speakers

You can learn Lua in less than a day. It has the bare minimal set of semantics needed for a language. One collection type, tables. Strings as atoms (think Erlang), so they are blazingly fast to compare.

@georgerogers1166

6 күн бұрын

Would be even better if they had both Strings and Symbols.

@amargasaurus5337

5 күн бұрын

do remember to remember what things are references and which are values and ints silently floatify if you're not careful those got my noob bottoms in trouble a few times, but it does pack a lot of power in little syntax!

@bullpup1337

5 күн бұрын

sorry, but after reading the lua book for 5.3, I have to say it will take me much longer to become proficient in lua. Its not quite as simple as it seems.

@griffitaj

4 күн бұрын

@@bullpup1337 For proficiency with just using lua you only need Chapter 3 of the book + reference for any libraries you are using. I agree that if you want to write lua modules in c it does take some time as each version of the lua API has its own subtleties.

@bullpup1337

3 күн бұрын

@@griffitaj We might be talking about a different book, I mean programming in lua by the inventor (ierusalimschy). Just finished chapter 18 on generators and iterators, and I have not even gotten to coroutines yet. There is a lot more than I thought to the language.

It is used to make GUI for Roblox games

@jboss1073

6 күн бұрын

WHY NOT TCL? IT IS A THOUSAND BILLION TIMES EASIER!

@criptych

6 күн бұрын

@@jboss1073 That was sarcasm, right? … Right?

@jboss1073

6 күн бұрын

@@criptych It depends. Is it possible to take simplifying lessons from Tcl and apply them to the web? The skill level of current programmers who build frameworks seems to suggest otherwise. If it is truly impossible to simply the web as much as Tcl simplified Desktop GUI - if you're telling me Tcl is a one-in-a-quadrillion event in humanity and we will never ever again simplify GUIs as much as Tcl did, then I guess you can take it as sarcasm. Boy, how special Tcl is...

@stefanalecu9532

6 күн бұрын

​​@@jboss1073 as much as I love Tcl and I use it for everything that requires quick GUIs and scripts... The team *really* has to get a better theme for Unix. And a lot of tooling to at least try and convince people to give it a shot. It is a great language buried in obscurity (unless you work in EDA or use Expect or Tkinter) Sidenote: it should be possible to straight up port Tk to the web (after all, we can use Emscripten and have the entire language run in the browser, which is lightweight enough to be viable)

@fueledbycoffee583

6 күн бұрын

actually all game logic is written in lua. Both UI and and game logic

you should implement preemptive coroutines/goroutines in vanilla lua with the debug library

I've always used Lua as the "embedded scripting language" to coordinate the logic in most of my projects. I have an IRC server that basically does all of the logic in Lua (and it just wires up the message handler pipelines and then calls Lua from C++). I've also used it in a network controller to essentially do a corporate version of Tailscale. Extremely easy to embed (Sol3 is great in C++, though it's getting to be borderline abandonware).

cursed title

@thingsiplay

6 күн бұрын

i read that as cursed titties

I’m currently reading the “Programming in Lua” book. It’s interesting for sure. Looking at it for writing a neovim plugin.

Great thing about Lua is that there's zero time wasted on architectual formalities, you just start coding. And since there's really no bad ways of solving something, results are never too horrible. Good developers make great code (as always), average coders make ok code and even bad ones make better code than in more complex environments with more options to screw yourself. I've done multiple-inheritance OO in lua, had every game object contained a Components-table where you could inject any game feature. Game loop iterated through those and class methods just had object as first param.

You can also embed Ruby either the whole regular version or mruby which is a smaller, easier to use version specifically built for this embedding usecase.

OMG!!! My embedded systems just got a new frontend. React-lua!!! Let's go!!!

As a part-time fun based Lua developer, there is a beautiful thing in Lua called Metatable and Metamethods. Since Lua lacks classes, these two can mimic some of object oriented behavior. You can easily change a table's behavior by using those metamethods. If you want to create an Array class, you would change the _newindex metamethod (this will be called when there is an assignment, _index will be called when there is an access.) to count its length and also set it with rawset() method. You can also change the behavior of the length operator (#). Using Lua made me furious because it lacks so many things like data structures and some algorithms/functionality you would consider a standard but later on after spending some time trying to implement things, this made me actually realize how much someone can forget the basics because using a library is a lot easier. It is a crazy small and core language that can be a lot more by using what it provides.

The funny part about Prime's "don't use a DSL, use Lua" is that Roberto Ierusalimschy, the BDFL of Lua, teaches a MOOC focused on creating small languages using Lua.

You can also embed scheme, with a similar size of Lua.

Yo dog, i heard you like Integrated development environments, so we downloaded an integrated development environment to program an integrated development environment so you can program an integrated development environment with my integrated development environment.

Shout-out to EmmyLua btw If I'm not mistaken they are the ones who innovated the type checking lsp functionality that SumNeko uses Might be wrong

@palmberry5576

3 күн бұрын

They are the one that made the annotations, but I think the type system is being completely rewritten (and still probably will be too weak to document the cc tweaked api lol)

You can expose native functions to js via JavaScript Interface on both iOS and Android. I think even react native is doing that after so many years. You can do updatable js in iOS/Android in a day as well.

Lua is so embeddable that it has risen to the proverbial Doom in "can it run Doom" of programming languages. If there is anything that I can reasonably embed Lua in, I will :D

I've been using lua for almost 20 years: World of Warcraft addons , it's lua 😉 Iirc, it was the 1st time I used it. And Prime is right, lua is a fantastic language. Even the name is cool, and poetic. Lua is not an acronym, it just means moon in portuguese. 🌔

I had pointed this problem how lua handles length in a PR to harpoon README fix.

QuickJS is just as easy to embed as Lua. Although when you start toying with async you will need an event loop

Is Lua itself getting updates? The interpreter shows "1994~2012".

@GerardLementec

6 күн бұрын

it is but in all honesty lua 5.1 or luajit are enough and is what is usually used in most projects

@arson5304

6 күн бұрын

roblox forked their own version of lua and is updating that, it's called luau

@_garicas

6 күн бұрын

Lua 5.1 was (and still is) the most popular version due all its features and still being really simple, also when LuaJIT was developed, it was based on Lua 5.1 and still is. There's Lua 5.4.6 which release data was 2023-05-02 (in the official Lua website), but people use version 5.1 a lot also to not break compatibility in some cases

@boblol1465

6 күн бұрын

lua5.4 exists but lua5.1 and luajit are the most popular versions luajit is based off lua5.1 and includes minor improvements from versions in the future

@Shaar_

6 күн бұрын

use luajit it's the better version for me

"Hey , feeling a bit unsettled after stumbling upon Marblism. Heard it can effortlessly whip up a full stack web app with impeccable codebase. Any thoughts?

There are some incredibly profitable services written entirely in LUA. I am not experienced with it, but I know some companies make a lot of money using it.

I had to write a PlayDate game in lua and had a great time towards the end

I hate that just like in QBasic any mispelled variables get a default value, nil. Instead of crashing and showing me the bug early the program continous and causes strange side effects :(. However I like Lua:s coroutines and how easy it is to embed it .

Brazil mentioned!

To bypass the #a problem, Garry's Mod gLua has table.Count(a) that iterates over the table to get the correct amount. My favorite part of lua is the fact that all tables are basically dictionaries, you can shove any data you want into them. Even a function could be a key!

@hallo7053

3 күн бұрын

idk that is not really a bypass, you can just use a for loop instead, but in the end imo it does not really matter anyway. I don't think I have ever used mixed dictionary and array in lua

@palmberry5576

3 күн бұрын

@@hallo7053yeah, the most mixing I have ever done would maybe be string | table or false | something

If you are annoyed by 1 base indexing just make a function which adds one.

I think all js developers should learn lua

It's not a "1 based indexing" difference it's indexing based off of an index rather than an offset

@isodoubIet

5 күн бұрын

Stop repeating TJ's nonsense. An "index" doesn't start at 1. An index, in sane programming languages, starts at zero. The difference is not between "indexing" and "subscripting", because those are the exact same thing; the difference is between "indexing" and "counting". Tl;dr it _is_ 1-based indexing.

YESSSSSSSSS REACT-LUA GETTING ATTENTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@lwinklly

6 күн бұрын

Both repos' github stars have doubled/tripled *already*, I don't know what arc this is starting but the part of my brain that has been interested in react-lua since 2021 couldn't be more hyped

Someone should make a course to teach programming in Roblox where you have to solve problems using code in the game. Would make an excellent class

Typescript for lua incoming.

@jembulkezmaslem5214

6 күн бұрын

Well actually it already happened since roblox uses their own modified version of lua called luau. It has types. Can't escape typescript lol.

@zzhabib1

6 күн бұрын

Already exists, roblox-ts is a TypeScript to lua compiler

@RT-.

5 күн бұрын

@@zzhabib1 Yep and it's used in production by some very big games

@hallo7053

4 күн бұрын

yeah but luau is different, they control the full stack unlike ts which is just a transpiler to javascript

i forced roblox-ts to write code for computercraft instead, it's fairly annoying to work with, but it's better than bare untyped lua

@askplays

6 күн бұрын

thats really cool

@RT-.

6 күн бұрын

You could write it with types with Luau and use darklua to remove those types

Lua is fun, can make cool scripts with it in roblox

Prime the first question you asked you just completely sidestep the answer and just started talking about Lua instead of the first question you asked which was how good is JS to Lua as a transliteration step.

The best part of learning Lua is to make Pico-8 games. 😁

LUA MENTIONED LET'S GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

@thingsiplay

6 күн бұрын

GO MENTIONED LET'S RUST

@randerins

6 күн бұрын

​@@thingsiplaywhat

@thingsiplay

5 күн бұрын

@@randerins yes

So lua has quantum state it's both an array and a map

it's hard to find any video game that doesn't have some cursed Lua in there... so good for Roblox for porting it... will be interesting to see in 10 years where all this Roblox stuff lead the then old enough programmers

@harleyspeedthrust4013

5 күн бұрын

roblox has always had some flavor of lua powering their games. roblox has also been around for at least ten years, maybe 15 (I couldn't be bothered to check). so i bet that many of the kids who cut their teeth writing games and scripts for roblox 10 years ago are working in software today

I haven't watched the video yet, but that's a banger of a title.

This is a bit misinformed. First off, Roblox uses luau (not lua), luau is a typed and much more performant lua alternative. The codebases were old, and before GitHub support luau syntax highlighting, and hence they're marked as lua. Secondly, Roblox's frontend is *not* written in luau, these libraries are equivalents to JS libraries for writing games on their platform. The only bit of frontend which uses this is their desktop app (LuaApp). EDIT: I noticed some people ask about typed arrays, and doc comments and a standard library; the luau community has made things for this. Typed arrays are built into luau types, doc comments are powered by moonwave (it's similar to rustdoc, it generates a doc site from comments for you) and lune is a runtime which implements a complete, lightweight, and fast standard library for it.

@lwinklly

4 күн бұрын

holy crack, new dev comp wisdom just dropped

@devcomptrickshots4136

2 күн бұрын

@@lwinklly hi

You forgot to mention that Roblox created their own dialect of Lua, named "Luau".

nothing preventing you from making a my_better_table module/abstraction in lua... i made my own switch and class "keywords" to get rid of all metatable handling for example

5:30 or you can embed a Lisp. But Lua is probably your best bet.

micropython is definitely still a thing but I've only ever heard about it in the context of microcontrollers.

What does "embedded systems" really mean? lol every one has a diff answer, i would like to know @ThePrimeTime 's definition

@bennythetiger6052

6 күн бұрын

I think any system that is specific to a device that is not considered a general purpose computer could be called embedded

@mage3690

6 күн бұрын

​@@bennythetiger6052I think prime's answer likely includes "device [or environment]" since he sometimes uses "embedded" to mean "embedded into a videogame". But yeah -- "specific to a device that is not considered a general purpose computer" is a pretty good definition, so long as you don't use "Turing machine" as your definition for "general purpose computer".

@aDaily1222

5 күн бұрын

@@bennythetiger6052 i like that one.

@bennythetiger6052

5 күн бұрын

@mage3690 I just mean a computer that wasn't made with a highly specific intention, like TVs for streaming videos, headphones for streaming audio, smart hubs for home or car controls, etc.

6:50 How is Luas error handling different from Pythons Try..Catch?

@SilentFire08

6 күн бұрын

because you didnt have to use try catch :)

@tranquangthang8897

6 күн бұрын

pcall?

@isodoubIet

5 күн бұрын

@@tranquangthang8897 trivial to implement

@isodoubIet

5 күн бұрын

@@tranquangthang8897 trivial to implement that in py

@isodoubIet

5 күн бұрын

very easy to implement pcall in py

HTML/CSS based UI is so much better than the UI libraries most games engines have built in. So awesome

@XxZeldaxXXxLinkxX

5 күн бұрын

It should be a universal standard at this point. Every other ui system just feels so clunky

Shoulda picked solid

Lua sounds cool. What country is it from?

@GabrielLima-gz8zg

6 күн бұрын

Brazil!!! 🇧🇷

You also get to create World of Wacraft addons if you learn lua :)

Lua computercraft

Lua mentioned let's go Vai Brasil

Came to laugh at Roblox doing something stupid, ended up changing my mind on Lua as a language.

What about C/C++ or Arduino for embedded systems? The are really popular. Just asking, probably I didn't get sth important here |^

@UnidimensionalPropheticCatgirl

22 сағат бұрын

Embedded scripting is what he is talking about, what you are talking about is embedded devices, those are like 99% done in C, occasionally some Ada or C++. Also arduino isn’t a language but a brand of MCUs, they use C with wiring HAL.

i wonder how feasible it would be to have lua running natively in the browser

@osmano807

6 күн бұрын

There's a browser with Lua instead of JS named Bussin Web X

@ahdog8

5 күн бұрын

Not exactly "native", but a WASM Lua runtime could probably be made with relative ease. I searched and it seems like someone's already working on one

lmfao i was the one who first found this in the roblox open source server

@lwinklly

4 күн бұрын

graah why are you here

Thank God they didn't make Angular in Lua. If they did, that'd be a big "Oof"!

They need roact-table

What do you think of luau?

Now if only they could port anti-child abuse law enforcement too.

So tj can be a react dev now?

why are you on lua 5.1.5?

Lua and "go horse", two Brazilian contemporary inventions.

@randerins

6 күн бұрын

....CAVALO.

Cade os meus manos do brazil mentioned?

What I don't like about Lua is the split with Luajit. It's like python2 and 3. At least in javascript we know newest is better.

@LtdJorge

6 күн бұрын

You mean the post Lua 5.1 stuff?

@pxkqd

6 күн бұрын

@@LtdJorge yeah, there's a 5.4 but both luajit and luau which I are pretty popular are stuck in 5.1 I know you can just use any version and it's not so super different, but it still makes Lua code less portable. I haven't checked but is this react-lua and the other Roblox stuff 5.1, or Luau syntax? Can it be used in Luajit? Or in official Lua? 🤷🏻‍♂️

@LtdJorge

6 күн бұрын

@@pxkqd I'm pretty sure the React thing is in Luau, since it's for Roblox UI.

@mxruben81

5 күн бұрын

​@@pxkqdluau does have features from newer versions of lua, they're just really picky about what they add.

Lua has 0 learning curve. Anyone who can code knows lua by default they just don’t realize it. On the other hand the usage of Lua is fairly limited till this day. I only get to use it in nvim, while being forced to use disgusting languages like c# or js at work.

@harleyspeedthrust4013

5 күн бұрын

what's so bad about c#? I've only seen snippets, so I'm genuinely curious.

@UnidimensionalPropheticCatgirl

22 сағат бұрын

@@harleyspeedthrust4013 It suffers from the c++ syndrome of “features will continue until morale improves”, the standard library is a kitchen sink in which even microsoft doesn’t follow its naming conventions, there’s always million things happening implicitly, the build system and package manager suck, the tooling outside of microsoft stuff also sucks

But why?

A lot of justifying of Lua, but that's doesn't really strike me as the shocking thing about this. I guess Prime assumes that React on the Roblox frontend is a given.

@jake-gs2gd

6 күн бұрын

It’s for the game engine and making game guis. Not for the site

BRAZIL MENTIONED!! LETS GO!!🇧🇷🇧🇷

Metatables !

Nah I can't handle 1 based indexing

☠️

BRAZIL MENTIONED

BRAZIL mentioned

Hail Brazil

Awesome

BRAZIL MENTIONED 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷

I really hope you change your i3 to AwesomeWM, which you can use Lua for everything

Lol I love lua circlejerks

Braaaaziillll 😂

What????

Me after the first 2,5 minutes: Ok, I'm never going to touch that language. That seems worse than even PHP! *shudder*

Ehhh.. 1 base indexing gives me shit every single time I use it 🤦‍♂️ why is this null!!- spend 5-10 min -“oh, I forgot I’m using a toy language! 🤦‍♂️”

I'm new to programming and I have no real world experience, but don't we use C/C++ for embedded systems programming? I'm learning C so that I can eventually work with real-time operating systems (mainly to work with cars and stuff). Should I change course and start learning lua? Or is it still okay to continue with C/C++ and ASM? Edit: Thanks for everyone for the insightful comments. It's cleared alot of the fog about this subject.

@LtdJorge

6 күн бұрын

C is used infinitely more in embedded.

@valley-artifact

6 күн бұрын

C and Lua have 2 complimentary use cases in that area, no real overlap. you can't use Lua for the OS because it's interpreted and requires a runtime environment, you use a systems programming language like C or Rust for that, the idea is that you then implement a Lua interpreter into the program so you can use Lua to easily extend functionality without recompiling anything, makes it easier to do things like control the devices remotely with scripts.

@harleyspeedthrust4013

5 күн бұрын

"embedded" means different things here. you're thinking of embedded microcontrollers or microprocessors which are typically programmed in their own flavors of C/C++. but "embedded" can also refer to a scripting environment "embedded" in another piece of software - like a video game that lets you write scripts, or something like that

TCL is also good.

WTF is that title?

# means length?????? i hate magic symbols

@criptych

6 күн бұрын

That's too bad, most programming languages use them. You might like Inform 7, though. Or Osmosian.

@pepperdayjackpac4521

6 күн бұрын

# is as magic as +, -, and !

I don't get what your expectation for the length operator is. Nil is the value of nonexistence. Setting a table index to nil is how you flag it for deletion.

Don't make me play roblox

But why React Though? Just feels wise it doesn't fit

React made right!!!

hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue