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Yegge points to the Tiobe language index as a metric to language adoption, and implies that "No" languages have low uptake. What about Lua? The Lua implementers

Yegge points to the Tiobe language index as a metric to language adoption, and implies that "No" languages have low uptake. What about Lua? The Lua implementers don't accept public patches, rather they will rewrite public patches that are submitted, and only if the change makes sense (citation: http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2008-06/msg00407.html http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2008-06/msg00407.html). Yet Lua is #12, up from 20. Saying "no" to language suggestions is not a bad thing, it all depends on the goals of the language and the philosophy of the language authors. Perhaps Yegge should try and understand the reasons why patches aren't accepted, rather than force their acceptance via his soapbox.

masklinn 15y ago
Lua is probably a bit of a special case, as it grew extremely popular due to its original niche (trivial integration in complex C and C++ projects): Lua was born in 1993, and started getting used in big-name games in the late 90s already (Baldur's Gate was scripted in Lua in 1998, so was Grim Fandango the same year). From there, it took over most of the gaming industry and could only leak out as a popular language.
- zem 15y ago
  the other point of view is that that makes it nothing more than the new tcl, and tcl managed to lose its popularity.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    tcl lost its popularity because it was displaced. By Lua. Because Lua had a lower dissonance with C and C++ (actual data types & al, for instance). Could lua itself be displaced? Sure, but there's no contender I see right now. And I don't think that's an other point of view.
    - zem 15y ago
      from what i remember, tcl's popularity waned long before lua caught on in a big way. people were looking to ruby and python as extension languages, even though they had a far higher impedance mismatch than tcl, simply because they were vastly more popular as languages by then
kaffiene 15y ago
Interesting point. Java is #1 on the Tiobe language index and it's pretty restrictive. There's generally one way to do things, style is prescribed. It did okay regardless

masklinn 15y ago

Lua is probably a bit of a special case, as it grew extremely popular due to its original niche (trivial integration in complex C and C++ projects): Lua was born in 1993, and started getting used in big-name games in the late 90s already (Baldur's Gate was scripted in Lua in 1998, so was Grim Fandango the same year). From there, it took over most of the gaming industry and could only leak out as a popular language.

zem 15y ago
the other point of view is that that makes it nothing more than the new tcl, and tcl managed to lose its popularity.
- masklinn 15y ago
  tcl lost its popularity because it was displaced. By Lua. Because Lua had a lower dissonance with C and C++ (actual data types & al, for instance). Could lua itself be displaced? Sure, but there's no contender I see right now. And I don't think that's an other point of view.
  - zem 15y ago
    from what i remember, tcl's popularity waned long before lua caught on in a big way. people were looking to ruby and python as extension languages, even though they had a far higher impedance mismatch than tcl, simply because they were vastly more popular as languages by then

kaffiene 15y ago

Interesting point. Java is #1 on the Tiobe language index and it's pretty restrictive. There's generally one way to do things, style is prescribed. It did okay regardless