Making a toy programming language in Lua, part 2 (playwithlua.com) 28 points by randrews 11y ago ↗ HN
[–] dsmith87 11y ago ↗ I thought Lua was already a toy programming language? [–] JadeNB 11y ago ↗ This seems to add nothing to the discussion. I downvoted it. [–] vvanders 11y ago ↗ Far from it, it makes for a fantastic scripting language that is incredibly extensible and works well in a lot of embedded spaces. [–] trynumber9 11y ago ↗ You must not have looked beyond the Pascal-inspired syntax. There is a whole host of features that many popular languages do not have, while being many times smaller and amiable to embedding.Ephemeron tables, generational GC, coroutines, tail call elimination, operator overloading, lexical scoping.
[–] vvanders 11y ago ↗ Far from it, it makes for a fantastic scripting language that is incredibly extensible and works well in a lot of embedded spaces.
[–] trynumber9 11y ago ↗ You must not have looked beyond the Pascal-inspired syntax. There is a whole host of features that many popular languages do not have, while being many times smaller and amiable to embedding.Ephemeron tables, generational GC, coroutines, tail call elimination, operator overloading, lexical scoping.
[–] kwhitefoot 11y ago ↗ What's the point of implementing a language that is less powerful than the one you are using to implement it? [–] JadeNB 11y ago ↗ Granting the (problematic) idea that more powerful is always better—to learn the techniques that will be used to build more powerful languages? [–] charonn0 11y ago ↗ It's a toy project. It's for fun, learning, and stimulating new ideas that can be applied to "real" projects. [–] randrews 11y ago ↗ To learn how LPeg works, and how interpreters work in general, so you can make more powerful languages later. [–] fiblye 11y ago ↗ The world's best programming languages weren't made in a day. Got to start somewhere mate [–] coleifer 11y ago ↗ If you don't get it then I feel sorry for you. [–] fit2rule 11y ago ↗ As wrong-headed a question as you're ever likely to find in a computer language discussion.Guess what? Every language is implemented in a more powerful language. That is just the nature of things.The point is to make the power available in other ways, which may - or may not - be more friendly to the intended user.
[–] JadeNB 11y ago ↗ Granting the (problematic) idea that more powerful is always better—to learn the techniques that will be used to build more powerful languages?
[–] charonn0 11y ago ↗ It's a toy project. It's for fun, learning, and stimulating new ideas that can be applied to "real" projects.
[–] randrews 11y ago ↗ To learn how LPeg works, and how interpreters work in general, so you can make more powerful languages later.
[–] fiblye 11y ago ↗ The world's best programming languages weren't made in a day. Got to start somewhere mate
[–] fit2rule 11y ago ↗ As wrong-headed a question as you're ever likely to find in a computer language discussion.Guess what? Every language is implemented in a more powerful language. That is just the nature of things.The point is to make the power available in other ways, which may - or may not - be more friendly to the intended user.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 36.4 ms ] threadEphemeron tables, generational GC, coroutines, tail call elimination, operator overloading, lexical scoping.
Guess what? Every language is implemented in a more powerful language. That is just the nature of things.
The point is to make the power available in other ways, which may - or may not - be more friendly to the intended user.