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Lua: The Easiest, Fully-Featured Language That Only a Few Programmers Know
Learning Lua is indeed easier than Python, Ruby, and JavaScript!
Creating a simple, easy-to-learn, interpreted programming language is not a hard task. We only need to write a parser and statement runner using any favorite programming language based on a simple language specification. As a performance enhancement, we can use a bytecode-based execution system instead of executing parsed source code directly as the Bash interpreter does. Anyone can create languages that are so simple and easy to learn, but every easy-to-learn language doesn’t become a useful general-purpose language. For example, creating a simple scripting language that only supports basic arithmetic operations won’t become a useful one that everyone can use for programming.
Most developers consider Python, Ruby, and JavaScript as easy-to-learn, simple, and useful languages. These simple languages offer developer-friendly, productive, simple grammar that motivates every programmer to use them for building any software project with the help of community-based libraries. Python undoubtedly provides a simpler syntax than the JavaScript language — writing Pythonic code feels like writing pseudo-code for most programmers. Is Python the easiest (but useful) language ever created?
Lua is a dynamically typed, lightweight, embeddable, fully-featured general-purpose language that is easier to learn than Python. Most game developers know the Lua language because it is widely used as an embedded scripting language within C/C++-based game engines. However, most non-game developers don’t know Lua — they still believe that Python is the easiest language in the world. In this story, we’ll explore the simplicity that Lua offers.
Lua, a Language to Master in Minutes — Not in Years
Programming languages come with different learning curves. You can learn some languages faster since they have few keywords, minimal syntax, and fewer unique core concepts. Meanwhile, some languages become more complex for newcomers if they introduce unique concepts that go beyond traditional theoretical programming concepts.
