this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
59 points (100.0% liked)
Learn Programming
2087 readers
48 users here now
Posting Etiquette
-
Ask the main part of your question in the title. This should be concise but informative.
-
Provide everything up front. Don't make people fish for more details in the comments. Provide background information and examples.
-
Be present for follow up questions. Don't ask for help and run away. Stick around to answer questions and provide more details.
-
Ask about the problem you're trying to solve. Don't focus too much on debugging your exact solution, as you may be going down the wrong path. Include as much information as you can about what you ultimately are trying to achieve. See more on this here: https://xyproblem.info/
Icon base by Delapouite under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
take a look at one of the “fantasy consoles”, can do quick scripts and see results immediately:
for an actual language, don’t discount Lua – simple, fast, tiny – “real programmers” like to ridicule it, and yet it keeps turning up everywhere from video game scripting to text editor configuration to databases to web servers
Lua to me is the language JavaScript wishes it was. It's super minimal and actually designed reasonably well. It knows what it is and isn't trying to be something else. I wouldn't want to try to write an entire app in it, but for a scripting language embedded in something else there's not a lot of languages I'd rate higher.
This might sound silly but why would you not want to write an app with it? Like, what are its limitations? I know very little about Lua
Lack of advanced features like generics and a weak type system (although still better than JavaScripts type system). Its library ecosystem is also pretty anemic because it's generally assumed if you're writing Lua it's as part of a script embedded in something else and most of those won't let you pull in random Lua libraries. There are stand alone Lua interpreters that let you run Lua on its own but most people writing Lua code aren't using them and so the community to develop a rich library ecosystem isn't really there like it is in most other languages.
I see. That makes sense, thanks for explaining
depends on how you define an app – Freewheeling Apps likes to combine Lua and LÖVE to make quick little GUI apps