7 ms·

I don't have much problem with programming an embedded device in a high-level language, but why JS specifically? Why not Lua, which just as fast, and is better

by 10098 13y ago

I don't have much problem with programming an embedded device in a high-level language, but why JS specifically? Why not Lua, which just as fast, and is better than javascript in many respects?

seldo 13y ago
I would have thought this was obvious, but orders of magnitude more developers know Javascript than Lua[1], thanks largely to the popularity of browsers as a programming environment. According to some recent research[2], the three primary factors affecting the adoption of a programming language by developers are, in this order: 1. Libraries available 2. Familiarity 3. Performance And per the paper, this order of preference is extremely strong. Which means, because of the huge mass of Javascript developers out there, that as soon as a library becomes available to do something in Javascript, Javascript will rapidly become the most popular way to do that thing, regardless of the performance hit. [1] http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/09/12/language-rankings-9-12/ http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/09/12/language-rankings-9-12... [2] http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~lmeyerov/projects/socioplt/papers/adoptquant.pdf http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~lmeyerov/projects/socioplt/pap...
- taylorbuley 13y ago
  I think JavaScript might be most successful on Arduino for the same reason - it's a platform with which most tinkerers are familiar. http://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2013/07/16/javascript-powered-arduino-with-johnny-five/ http://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2013/07/16/javascript-powe...
  - tlrobinson 13y ago
    I suspect Arduino (at least the ones I've used, Uno?) are a bit underpowered for higher level managed languages like JavaScript.
    - wyager 13y ago
      Absolutely. On AVRs, `new` and `malloc` work, but just barely. RAII/stack-only programming is basically a necessity. That is simply not possible with languages like Python or Javascript.
      - taylorbuley 13y ago
        JS doesn't necessarily have to run natively for this kind of programming model to work out. Johnny5, the library discussed in the link I provided, rather provides an interface to the Arduino's StandardFirmata API http://firmata.org/wiki/Main_Pager http://firmata.org/wiki/Main_Pager
      - gfwilliams 13y ago
        To be fair, the Espruino JavaScript interpreter manages this pretty well (in around 8kB of RAM). http://www.espruino.com http://www.espruino.com
  - ams6110 13y ago
    Anyone with a tinkerer's mind would not have a moment's trouble picking up Lua particularly if they already knew Javascript (or any other scripting language for that matter).
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  > the three primary factors affecting the adoption of a programming language by developers are, in this order: > 1. Libraries available Not just programming languages. Microcontrollers too. You could get much better performance out of a bare AVR, but where are the libraries and modules? Whereas an Arduino comes with a library for anything that moves - of course most people are going to prefer it.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    What makes the Arduino non-"bare"? The Arduino language is just C++, which gets compiled using gcc and uploaded using avrdude. It's not exactly running on a VM or using an interpreted language.
    - Florin_Andrei 13y ago
      Sure, but with Arduino you're still floating on top of the Wiring libraries for almost anything you do. Coding a bare-metal AVR is a bit different: http://florin.myip.org/blog/how-make-halloween-creepy-blinking-eyes-atmel-avr-microcontroller http://florin.myip.org/blog/how-make-halloween-creepy-blinki... There's no significant difference, unless you want fully predictable real-time behavior (of which my piece of code is NOT an example, but that's all I have online). Most people shouldn't care.
      - euroclydon 13y ago
        Thanks for sharing. I'm working (very slowly at the moment) on an AVR simulator in order to teach myself C. I think this is a great little program to compile and test with.
      - marssaxman 13y ago
        You can start with a straight-up Arduino program and mix in as much bare-metal AVR code as you like. There's nothing in between you and the hardware, and that's important when you discover that time matters. I've done a fair amount of embedded work, some with AVRs and some with various ARM chips, mostly Cortex-M3... I always start with the nice libraries because why waste your time reinventing that stuff if you don't have to? But when you have to reach deeper and gain finer-grained control over your hardware - and almost every project eventually has to do that eventually - it's really, really nice not to have some VM in the way, not to have to start over in a lower-level environment.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Language popularity is a pretty fickle thing. It was not too long ago that you'd be laughed out of the room if you suggested using Javascript for any kind of serious work. Perl, once the king of scripting languages by orders of magnitude, is now viewed as being something close to COBOL: a few old guys know it, but none of the cool kids will touch it.
  - WalterSear 13y ago
    The more things change, the more things change. Javascript isn't Perl and isn't being used like Perl. For example, people aren't turning it into an hardware embedded language.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    JavaScript has a uniquely privileged position, though. It is the only language you can use to script the browser. As long as that is the case (and browsers are a relevant programming environment), you will always have web developers who know it, either as their primary language or as a secondary one. Imagine if the only way you could script Linux servers was in Perl -- it's hard to imagine it falling off in popularity the way it did in our universe. Other languages supplanted it because other languages could supplant it.
- gmac 13y ago
  Also, of dynamic languages, JS is among the most performant, and many times faster than (say) Ruby.
thatthatis 13y ago
Javascript is becoming(has become?) the lowest common denominator in computing.
coreyja 13y ago
Slightly off topic, but is it just me or has Lua gotten a lot of attention on HN in the past weekish? I haven't heard much of Lua before but recently it seems to have come up a lot more. And even more off topic (sorry), what makes Lua better/different than other scripting languages? EDIT: On jacobwcarlson suggestion, I Googled Lua vs Python, and found this Wiki, http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaVersusPython http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaVersusPython Not a speed comparison, but gives a fair amount of difference in the actual languages. And yes it is on a Lua users site, so may be biased, but on my very light reading didn't seem too bad.
- Aldo_MX 13y ago
  Lua is a language designed to be embeddable, Javascript is a language that didn't even had the chance to be properly designed. Although I'm one of those Lua "unadopters", for me it's better to simplify stuff to my audience, and I have considered seriously to use JavaScript for my next project instead of Lua.
  - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
    Both javascript and lua were designed for very similar goals. It just so happens that the designers of Lua had more time to do it- plus they aren't burdened with the need to always be backwards compatible, so lua (now at version 5) breaks scripts written for older versions. So they each have their trade offs.
    - Aldo_MX 13y ago
      I'm pretty confident that if Lua were as widespread as JavaScript is, a backwards incompatible change would be less likely to happen, although with Corona SDK, I'm also confident that Lua will have an opportunity to shine :).
      - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
        I"m not sure that "widespread" really would do it. The other difference between Javascript and Lua is that- while Javascript has been embedded in adobe software, modified to become actionscript, and is the scripting language in some games, its primary use has always been the web- with its specific DOM api. The web carries with it the backwards compatibility burden. Lua doesn't have to be backwards compatible because nobody has to upgrade to the latest version of lua- and there isn't much of a standard library to break anyway- All the things you'd traditionally use a library for are provided by the outer application lua is embedded in- an application likely not written in lua itself- and so if you do decide to upgrade your app/game the only thing you break is individual scripts.
doelie_ 13y ago
Bare metal Lua: http://www.eluaproject.net/ http://www.eluaproject.net/
- zhemao 13y ago
  There was also a project to embed a Lua interpreter in the NetBSD kernel. http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/luakern/ http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/luakern/
Sharma 13y ago
Someone said once "If it CAN be developed in Javascript, eventually it WILL be developed in javascript"
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  That's "Atwood's Law" The name of it is a hint as to who said it.
  - aanand 13y ago
    Good ol’ Margaret.

by 10098 13y ago

I don't have much problem with programming an embedded device in a high-level language, but why JS specifically? Why not Lua, which just as fast, and is better than javascript in many respects?

seldo 13y ago

I would have thought this was obvious, but orders of magnitude more developers know Javascript than Lua[1], thanks largely to the popularity of browsers as a programming environment. According to some recent research[2], the three primary factors affecting the adoption of a programming language by developers are, in this order: 1. Libraries available 2. Familiarity 3. Performance And per the paper, this order of preference is extremely strong. Which means, because of the huge mass of Javascript developers out there, that as soon as a library becomes available to do something in Javascript, Javascript will rapidly become the most popular way to do that thing, regardless of the performance hit. [1] http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/09/12/language-rankings-9-12/ http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/09/12/language-rankings-9-12... [2] http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~lmeyerov/projects/socioplt/papers/adoptquant.pdf http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~lmeyerov/projects/socioplt/pap...

taylorbuley 13y ago
I think JavaScript might be most successful on Arduino for the same reason - it's a platform with which most tinkerers are familiar. http://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2013/07/16/javascript-powered-arduino-with-johnny-five/ http://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2013/07/16/javascript-powe...
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  I suspect Arduino (at least the ones I've used, Uno?) are a bit underpowered for higher level managed languages like JavaScript.
  - wyager 13y ago
    Absolutely. On AVRs, `new` and `malloc` work, but just barely. RAII/stack-only programming is basically a necessity. That is simply not possible with languages like Python or Javascript.
    - taylorbuley 13y ago
      JS doesn't necessarily have to run natively for this kind of programming model to work out. Johnny5, the library discussed in the link I provided, rather provides an interface to the Arduino's StandardFirmata API http://firmata.org/wiki/Main_Pager http://firmata.org/wiki/Main_Pager
    - gfwilliams 13y ago
      To be fair, the Espruino JavaScript interpreter manages this pretty well (in around 8kB of RAM). http://www.espruino.com http://www.espruino.com
- ams6110 13y ago
  Anyone with a tinkerer's mind would not have a moment's trouble picking up Lua particularly if they already knew Javascript (or any other scripting language for that matter).
Florin_Andrei 13y ago
> the three primary factors affecting the adoption of a programming language by developers are, in this order: > 1. Libraries available Not just programming languages. Microcontrollers too. You could get much better performance out of a bare AVR, but where are the libraries and modules? Whereas an Arduino comes with a library for anything that moves - of course most people are going to prefer it.
- icebraining 13y ago
  What makes the Arduino non-"bare"? The Arduino language is just C++, which gets compiled using gcc and uploaded using avrdude. It's not exactly running on a VM or using an interpreted language.
  - Florin_Andrei 13y ago
    Sure, but with Arduino you're still floating on top of the Wiring libraries for almost anything you do. Coding a bare-metal AVR is a bit different: http://florin.myip.org/blog/how-make-halloween-creepy-blinking-eyes-atmel-avr-microcontroller http://florin.myip.org/blog/how-make-halloween-creepy-blinki... There's no significant difference, unless you want fully predictable real-time behavior (of which my piece of code is NOT an example, but that's all I have online). Most people shouldn't care.
    - euroclydon 13y ago
      Thanks for sharing. I'm working (very slowly at the moment) on an AVR simulator in order to teach myself C. I think this is a great little program to compile and test with.
    - marssaxman 13y ago
      You can start with a straight-up Arduino program and mix in as much bare-metal AVR code as you like. There's nothing in between you and the hardware, and that's important when you discover that time matters. I've done a fair amount of embedded work, some with AVRs and some with various ARM chips, mostly Cortex-M3... I always start with the nice libraries because why waste your time reinventing that stuff if you don't have to? But when you have to reach deeper and gain finer-grained control over your hardware - and almost every project eventually has to do that eventually - it's really, really nice not to have some VM in the way, not to have to start over in a lower-level environment.
ams6110 13y ago
Language popularity is a pretty fickle thing. It was not too long ago that you'd be laughed out of the room if you suggested using Javascript for any kind of serious work. Perl, once the king of scripting languages by orders of magnitude, is now viewed as being something close to COBOL: a few old guys know it, but none of the cool kids will touch it.
- WalterSear 13y ago
  The more things change, the more things change. Javascript isn't Perl and isn't being used like Perl. For example, people aren't turning it into an hardware embedded language.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  JavaScript has a uniquely privileged position, though. It is the only language you can use to script the browser. As long as that is the case (and browsers are a relevant programming environment), you will always have web developers who know it, either as their primary language or as a secondary one. Imagine if the only way you could script Linux servers was in Perl -- it's hard to imagine it falling off in popularity the way it did in our universe. Other languages supplanted it because other languages could supplant it.
gmac 13y ago
Also, of dynamic languages, JS is among the most performant, and many times faster than (say) Ruby.

thatthatis 13y ago

Javascript is becoming(has become?) the lowest common denominator in computing.

coreyja 13y ago

Slightly off topic, but is it just me or has Lua gotten a lot of attention on HN in the past weekish? I haven't heard much of Lua before but recently it seems to have come up a lot more. And even more off topic (sorry), what makes Lua better/different than other scripting languages? EDIT: On jacobwcarlson suggestion, I Googled Lua vs Python, and found this Wiki, http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaVersusPython http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaVersusPython Not a speed comparison, but gives a fair amount of difference in the actual languages. And yes it is on a Lua users site, so may be biased, but on my very light reading didn't seem too bad.

Aldo_MX 13y ago
Lua is a language designed to be embeddable, Javascript is a language that didn't even had the chance to be properly designed. Although I'm one of those Lua "unadopters", for me it's better to simplify stuff to my audience, and I have considered seriously to use JavaScript for my next project instead of Lua.
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  Both javascript and lua were designed for very similar goals. It just so happens that the designers of Lua had more time to do it- plus they aren't burdened with the need to always be backwards compatible, so lua (now at version 5) breaks scripts written for older versions. So they each have their trade offs.
  - Aldo_MX 13y ago
    I'm pretty confident that if Lua were as widespread as JavaScript is, a backwards incompatible change would be less likely to happen, although with Corona SDK, I'm also confident that Lua will have an opportunity to shine :).
    - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
      I"m not sure that "widespread" really would do it. The other difference between Javascript and Lua is that- while Javascript has been embedded in adobe software, modified to become actionscript, and is the scripting language in some games, its primary use has always been the web- with its specific DOM api. The web carries with it the backwards compatibility burden. Lua doesn't have to be backwards compatible because nobody has to upgrade to the latest version of lua- and there isn't much of a standard library to break anyway- All the things you'd traditionally use a library for are provided by the outer application lua is embedded in- an application likely not written in lua itself- and so if you do decide to upgrade your app/game the only thing you break is individual scripts.

doelie_ 13y ago

Bare metal Lua: http://www.eluaproject.net/ http://www.eluaproject.net/

zhemao 13y ago
There was also a project to embed a Lua interpreter in the NetBSD kernel. http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/luakern/ http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/luakern/

Sharma 13y ago

Someone said once "If it CAN be developed in Javascript, eventually it WILL be developed in javascript"

TheZenPsycho 13y ago
That's "Atwood's Law" The name of it is a hint as to who said it.
- aanand 13y ago
  Good ol’ Margaret.