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There is a point when it doesn't make any difference if the language sucks or not. What matters is if it is capable. You can say the same about most successful

There is a point when it doesn't make any difference if the language sucks or not. What matters is if it is capable. You can say the same about most successful languages: C sucks, shell script sucks, eLisp sucks, LaTeX sucks, but they're all there and will continue to be because they have been capable of support the communities for which they were designed. Now, you can freely dream about the perfect extension language for UNIX, or vi, or TeX, or emacs, but it won't make any difference because nobody will move from something that works to an unproven extension language just because some people (usually the minority) feel that it is a more comfortable language for them.

oblio 5y ago
> Now, you can freely dream about the perfect extension language for UNIX, or vi, or TeX, or emacs, but it won't make any difference because nobody will move from something that works to an unproven extension language just because some people (usually the minority) feel that it is a more comfortable language for them. Lua ia an extremely powerful and popular extension language. It probably has at least 10x the users that Vimscript has. And people willingly choose Lua. Barely anyone chooses Vimscript, they're generally forced to use it. If anything, Vimscript is the <<unproven>> extension language. It's in Vim because Bram made it the Vim language, but it was never voted on or designed. Vimscript will most likely die with Vim, because I'm quite convinced that outside of trolling attempts, no one will adopt it for another app ;-)
- coliveira 5y ago
  > Vimscript will most likely die with Vim Which is just fine! Vimscript was created to create simple vim scripts, not to build full programs. And if you need to do more than Vimscript can do, Vim already provides this: it has native bindings to Lua, among other languages. If Lua was such in demand to write vim scripts, at this point it should have taken over VimScript as the main extension language, but it hasn't, and I guess that unless something huge happens in the community, it won't.

oblio 5y ago

> Now, you can freely dream about the perfect extension language for UNIX, or vi, or TeX, or emacs, but it won't make any difference because nobody will move from something that works to an unproven extension language just because some people (usually the minority) feel that it is a more comfortable language for them. Lua ia an extremely powerful and popular extension language. It probably has at least 10x the users that Vimscript has. And people willingly choose Lua. Barely anyone chooses Vimscript, they're generally forced to use it. If anything, Vimscript is the <<unproven>> extension language. It's in Vim because Bram made it the Vim language, but it was never voted on or designed. Vimscript will most likely die with Vim, because I'm quite convinced that outside of trolling attempts, no one will adopt it for another app ;-)

coliveira 5y ago
> Vimscript will most likely die with Vim Which is just fine! Vimscript was created to create simple vim scripts, not to build full programs. And if you need to do more than Vimscript can do, Vim already provides this: it has native bindings to Lua, among other languages. If Lua was such in demand to write vim scripts, at this point it should have taken over VimScript as the main extension language, but it hasn't, and I guess that unless something huge happens in the community, it won't.