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Yes, the class stuff in MS is plain wrong, all of it (except `=>`, maybe). In my fork, I plan to drop it all. The thing is, the prototypal, copy-on-write nature

Yes, the class stuff in MS is plain wrong, all of it (except `=>`, maybe). In my fork, I plan to drop it all. The thing is, the prototypal, copy-on-write nature of Lua object orientation is not a disability, there's no need to "fix" it, the model is powerful enough as it is, it just needs to be used well. Some years ago I learned Io - another prototype-based language, similar to Self - and I was amazed at how expressive it is based on a very small set of core primitives. All the primitives, including async calls in coroutines, are either built-in in Lua or are trivially implemented with a small code transformation.

chatmasta 7y ago
MoonScript reminds me of CoffeeScript in this regard. Lua and JS are both prototypical languages, which is a feature, not a bug. Putting some `class` syntactic sugar around it helps initially, but also causes confusion when it doesn't act like a traditional OOP class.
- Quenty 7y ago
  Lua isn’t really a prototypical language, it’s a build-your-own-class system. Metatables help facilitate this. You can do classic OOP if you want.
anonymoushn 7y ago
Oh, this sounds quite pleasant. I'll have a look at the fork.
leafo 7y ago
Disclaimer: I'm the author of MoonScript > Yes, the class stuff in MS is plain wrong There's nothing wrong about it, I'm sorry you don't like it! I'm happy that you have your own ideas but to go around saying it's wrong isn't very cool. The system was very intentionally designed. Now that's it's been 9 years and I've written 100s of thousands of lines of MoonScript, the class has proved to be very reliable. It compiles to simple concepts that are easy to reason about when working with both large and small code bases. > The thing is, the prototypal, copy-on-write nature of Lua object orientation This line is confusing to me. There is nothing about lua that is fundamentally copy-on-write. That would have to be a choice the developer makes, but it would be hard to enforce with language primitives unless you're hiding data within meta-tables I think you're getting hung up on details that have nothing to do with MoonScript: if you want a different language then use a different language. Don't go around saying it's wrong because it's not the language you want.

chatmasta 7y ago

MoonScript reminds me of CoffeeScript in this regard. Lua and JS are both prototypical languages, which is a feature, not a bug. Putting some `class` syntactic sugar around it helps initially, but also causes confusion when it doesn't act like a traditional OOP class.

Quenty 7y ago
Lua isn’t really a prototypical language, it’s a build-your-own-class system. Metatables help facilitate this. You can do classic OOP if you want.

anonymoushn 7y ago

Oh, this sounds quite pleasant. I'll have a look at the fork.

leafo 7y ago

Disclaimer: I'm the author of MoonScript > Yes, the class stuff in MS is plain wrong There's nothing wrong about it, I'm sorry you don't like it! I'm happy that you have your own ideas but to go around saying it's wrong isn't very cool. The system was very intentionally designed. Now that's it's been 9 years and I've written 100s of thousands of lines of MoonScript, the class has proved to be very reliable. It compiles to simple concepts that are easy to reason about when working with both large and small code bases. > The thing is, the prototypal, copy-on-write nature of Lua object orientation This line is confusing to me. There is nothing about lua that is fundamentally copy-on-write. That would have to be a choice the developer makes, but it would be hard to enforce with language primitives unless you're hiding data within meta-tables I think you're getting hung up on details that have nothing to do with MoonScript: if you want a different language then use a different language. Don't go around saying it's wrong because it's not the language you want.