Lua in 100 Seconds

Lua is a lightweight dynamic scripting language often embedded into other programs like World of Warcraft and Roblox. It's minimal syntax makes it easier to learn than Python, while being much more performant than other interpreted languages.
#programming #compsci #100SecondsOfCode
🔗 Resources
Lua Manual www.lua.org/ma...
Lua History www.researchga...
Lua C API riptutorial.co...
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🎨 My Editor Settings
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🔖 Topics Covered
What is Lua?
What is Lua used for?
Is Lua faster than Python?
Lua vs Python
Lua Basics Tutorial
How do tables work in Lua?
How to use C or C++ with Lua

[@vicradon]

I love how Jeff always uses “hi mom” instead of “hello world”. Edit: Jeff made a Twitter post about how his Mom always watched his videos and was proud of him even though she wasn't a programmer. Sadly she passed away. My heartfelt condolences Jeff. I'm sure she in a better place seeing the great work you do for the tech community making these amazing videos. ❤

[@bigoulie931]

Same thing, because she is his world

[@salmanbehen4384]

@@bigoulie931 Maybe because of hava.

[@padamupreti]

I wonder if he does this because his mom watches every video he puts out, so he is saying hi knowing this

[@alpers.2123]

So cute

[@masmullin]

Is name is Jeff? Well today I just learned TWO things!

[@alexandermichaud957]

Being subscribed to this channel is a problem, because every day I learn about a new piece of technology I want to go play around with

[@drishalballaney6590]

ngl you had us in the first half xD

[@joseph0x45]

i litteraly have a txt file where i keep a list of technologies i want to play around with later, 90% come from this channel lmao

[@Thespokenone]

@@joseph0x45 That's a pretty handy idea, I'll remember to do that!

[@DogeMultiverse]

Just print hello world and add that programming language into your resume

[@Thespokenone]

@@DogeMultiverse I can see why that's your profile name 😂

[@tati6213]

Pretty cool seeing people talk about lua, it was invented in my university and I had a class lectured by one of the creators you showed in this video!

[@Psychopatz]

You're one lucky guy!

[@gloverelaxis]

wow, that's amazing! please tell that lecturer that one more person out there absolutely loves the language they designed

[@sbrunner69]

Awesome! I’ve been using lua in mach4 on my homemade cnc router. It’s cool.

[@hodayfa000h]

wait what

[@cheeseboiyes._.]

so that means if your university didn't exist roblox would not even be a thing lol

[@Ren-bo7bj]

Lua is one of the greatest scripting language for video game mods that I have encountered. If you're creating a game and have mods in mind as a possible feature, include Lua scripts in that mod loader, the community will make amazing things with it.

[@sethjets4687]

hades 2 for example

[@olivers.7821]

The Minetest Engine also uses Lua to code mods for it. I am currently trying to learn Lua to make some mods for it :)

[@stephen303]

Factorio mods are done in large part through Lua, I believe!

[@thadashley2911]

GTA V modding has a lot of Lua scripts as well. Personally trying to use it to tinker with awesomeWM.

[@Little-bird-told-me]

Lists of keywords in each launguage ANSI COBOL 85: 357 SystemVerilog: 250 + 73 reserved system functions = 323 VHDL 2008: 115 reserved words C#: 79 + 23 contextual = 102 F#: 64 + 8 from ocaml + 26 future = 98 C++: 82 Dart: 54 Java: 50 (48 without unused keywords const and goto) PHP: 49 Ruby 42 JavaScript: 38 reserved words + 8 words reserved in strict mode only Python 3.7: 35 C: 32 Python 2.7: 31 Go: 25 Elm : 25 Lua: 22 CoffeeScript: 19, not necessarily "reserved", plus ~50 to avoid from JS Smalltalk: 6 pseudo-variables iota: 2

[@B20C0]

Brainfuck enters the chat.

[@lolxdrandomman69]

Thanks man

[@zkksch]

subleq: 0 or 1

[@games4us132]

Isn't coffee script a wrapper around js ?

[@memerified]

B

[@phire0]

Lua is what most likely got me into programming. I started messing around with it in Roblox back in 2010 when I was only nine and that got me into computers, now I'm a software engineer :)

[@samast253]

same!

[@znimator]

same! but for a gamedev ❤

[@isaiahballah2787]

I also started with learning lua when I was around 11 and now i've interned at google twice as a swe

[@isaiahballah2787]

also on Roblox of course

[@-data]

@@isaiahballah2787 nice! hope that all goes well

[@KalleJillheden]

Lua doesn't have Regex because the Regex C library is bigger than the entire Lua compiler and runtime, including Lua's own "Lua patterns" that works like a simpler Regex.

[@Rice7th]

I love lua patterns soo much!

[@TheJobCompany]

or you can write your own parser, which, let's face it, is probably gonna be smaller than the regex matcher

[@halflifefan]

Some CS:GO cheats' Lua API's have an ability to run JavaScript code, so we just use that if Lua patterns limit us lol

[@inserteunnombreapropiado9079]

Has simpler Regex, but still enough to make many things.

[@holthuizenoemoet591]

I love lua's simple and elegant syntax, like # to get the length, its simple for loop, etc However it lakes a lot of useful stuff, like math constants PI and Euler etc. A short spread operator, instead you have to use table.unpack To print a table you need to unpack it first, print(table.unpack(my_table)) I wish lua or luau had these functions so that i could use it form my data science projects

[@jakubsebek]

Fun fact: The PyTorch machine learning library that everyone loves is actually based on the original Torch library, built for Lua.

[@DaveParr]

That's amazing. I literally had no idea and that's my new favourite fact.

[@testtest-qm7cj]

@@DaveParr And sadly, Torch library is now abandoned in favor of PyTorch.

[@manojkothwal3586]

😳

[@heyoudodobird]

how to script: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZfRXqSDoahrbJY

[@nishanth6403]

damn

[@douggale5962]

The way you depict the arrays starting at one is perfection.

[@lunyxappocalypse7071]

Fun fact, Lua is has one based indexing for tables.

[@xyz2112zyx]

I knew nothing about Lua 2 months ago, but now I realize that Lua is a good complement for C language, and viceversa. Both languages work beautifully between them and when I need to code something quickly, I use Lua, but when I need more performance, I use C or C++. I wonder why I didn't learn before about Lua...

[@xyz2112zyx]

And sorry about Python fans, but I learnt more Lua in 1 week that what I learnt about Python in 1 year... I feel Python is becoming complex and clumsy about its syntax and program complexity...

[@hjrgf]

​@@xyz2112zyx I realised python is really bad for anything but data science and machine learning

[@NotePortal]

@@hjrgf Yeah, lua imo is best for beginners. its extremely easy to learn.

[@mikolmisol6258]

Lua is interesting because it's what I'd a call a "low level" scripting langauge. It's not close to the metal or anything, but it is quite flexible. It doesn't have classes, but you can implement them with function tables, metatables, or closures, each having its advantages and disadvantages. You can also implement multiple inheritance using metatable pooling. You can reuse tables to conserve memory with the table.clear() function. Iterators are simply functions that return a function for retrieving the next element of your (custom) collection.

[@gamemoves2415]

No one cares.

[@PokeRuto898]

@@gamemoves2415 35.346 People care

[@wishub]

@@gamemoves2415 rip bozo

[@philippjungkamp3760]

@@gamemoves2415 This is actually a nicely written collection of things that make lua great. I care and I like this quality comment. Back to Lua: Integrating it as a dynamic configuration is also super easy and really flexible. And with LuaJIT the Lua code/configuration can also yield really fast machine code.

[@gamemoves2415]

@@philippjungkamp3760 so what? Not like anyone is going to use every you've written. If they need lua information they are certainly not coming to an obscure comment. Everyone is going to Google.

[@felixo.8818]

While there are no traditional classes in lua, you should note that there is a concept called metatables that allows for object oriented programming.

[@nathanhedglin931]

@@gamemoves2415 someone's mom didn't hug them enough as a kid

[@Youkakun]

Closures are good enough but metatables allow overloading of operators - that's the point but not a strong one.

[@sournois90]

@@gamemoves2415 "omg guys im so random look mom, im a shitposter!!!!! 😏😏🤩🤩😎😎🤣🤣🤣🤣" "omg why do i have no friends and social life??? 🤔🤔🤨🙄😥😲🤡😭😭😭😭"

[@v0xl]

yeah you can even do complex "prototype" chains with them!

[@RoyRope]

@@gamemoves2415 I do, shut up.

[@dyXurChannel]

Lua has become one of my favorite programming languages. It's sheer simplicity makes writing it an absolute joy.

[@xn--719h]

make roblox game

[@duxofducks]

@@xn--719h too hard

[@boblol1465]

yeah, some people hate it for its simplicity and some people love it precisely for it

[@deesh6378]

@@boblol1465 not to mention that Roblox uses their own fork of Lua nowadays called Luau that supports variable types, true multithreading, etc.

[@NotGarbageLoops]

I really want to use it but the counting from 1 messes me up :(. Looks like such a cool language otherwise.

[@ScotsmanRS]

Fun fact: in Scottish Gaelic, “luath” (pronounced much the same as “Lua”) means “fast”.

[@Cradien]

glé luath! (very fast)

[@ScotsmanRS]

@@Cradien Gu mì-fhortanach, chan eil sìon a dh’fhios agamsa dè cho luath ’s a tha Lua. 🤷🏻‍♂️😂

[@captmcneil]

To me, Lua always felt like someone heard the "JavaScript the Good Parts" talk by Doug Crockford, and decided to make a language from it. Sometimes I wish, we had Lua in the browser.

[@e1nste1in]

I met lua first time in the *Computercraft* extension for Minecraft - never had so much fun coding before that. I think this should be the first project in classes to motivate pupils für CS.

[@christopherk4166]

Yes! That's how I really got into programming :)

[@dauerplay4544]

Fucking loved that mod great memories

[@Taaz2]

I met this mod on my first steps into programming too! I remember it was possible to use turtles to craft banned stuff like chunk anchors or run thru residences to siphon chests. Oh man I would love to go back and explore that mod for the first time again (I am sorry to whoever I griefed that one day)

[@jwalty]

@@Taaz2 Came to talk about my ComputerCraft experience and found somebody who did exactly what I did. I would steal from chests with wireless turtles and it's probably the peak of my minecraft career

[@korhzik77750]

@@dauerplay4544 2 words: Open computers (:

[@cookiecan10]

Computercraft is a populair Minecraft mod that adds programmable blocks and drones (turtles) into the game, it uses Lua as their scripting language and it's how I got in contact with programming for the first time.

[@dfoxg]

Same here. It was the beginning of my programming career 🙋 I think my very first programm was a password-locked door. Great old times

[@rrune]

Computercraft is wild. Played a modpack a year ago and needed something to dig. Didn't have the patience to learn Lua for it, but going through the scripts of others and fixing bugs was really fun

[@nollix]

Computercraft is shit. Use OpenComputers.

[@MrFunny01]

@@nollix computercraft is just old, for older versions. OpebComputers - remake of ComputerCraft with more flexible API, devices etc.

[@airgeadlamh]

@@MrFunny01 opencomputers stoppped on 1.12.2, so, no thank you, i'm gonna stick with ComputerCraft as it can even be played at 1.18+ already

[@f-person]

Also worth mentioning that Lua is a first-class citizen for Neovim

[@ariankar98k]

BRASIL! VOCÊ FINALMENTE CRIOU ALGO ÚTIL! OBRIGADO MEU QUERIDO PAÍS!

[@maushax]

neovim was created by a brazilian (Thiago de Arruda), so is the second (maybe there are more) useful thing created in Brazil, and curiously, neovim uses Lua for plug-in creation and configuration. Edit: Elixir is also created by a brazilian, so Lua is definitely not the only useful thing created by them.

[@Mrguaxinim]

@@maushax Vou aprender lua, acho ela ótima pra scripting

[@0kr4m]

@@maushax Brazil invented planes....

[@viniciusneiva5796]

Cara acredite ou n'ao, com o pouco investimento que a gente tem, a gente realmente é pioneiro em muita coisa na TI.

[@lookatel3658]

Por isso que ficou mais claro de noite

[@ProfreshionalLifeBeyond]

A brilliant and thorough introduction to Lua. Thank you for your 100 second session. Much appreciated from beautiful Melbourne Australia from an ex-software engineer.

[@pinkink9281]

First time I heard about lua when I thought about switching vscode by nvim and found out plenty of nvim plugins are written in lua. That was a barrier for me 'cause I really didn't want to spend a lot of time learing new language just to use nvim properly. But just this one small video makes me feel it's not that scary to go into lua. Thank you Jeff for your videos they're really inspiring

[@heyoudodobird]

how to script: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZfRXqSDoahrbJY

[@elnico5623]

Lua is most probably the easiest language to get into

[@ForeverZer0]

I know this comment it a year old, but for others: You will literally learn Lua naturally without even trying just by taking the time to configure neovim how you like it. Assuming you have some very minimal programming experience in any language, you can just dive in, you will figure it out as you go without once ever reading the Lua docs.

[@hashtags_YT]

Lua does have classes (though it doesn't do them the same way python for example does), they can be created via a metatable and they support inheritance, object values, the self keyword and just about anything else you can think of. Thanks to the colon operator closely followed by the self keyword, it's obviously an intended feature rather than something that can be simulated.

[@mikumikudice]

Actually self is not a keyword but a default defined argument of functions that use the colon notation instead of dot

[@divingradish]

Lua doesn't have classes, but you can make classes using table.

[@elpersonpl576]

if lua had classes then there would be a class keyword of something of that sort

[@divingradish]

@@elpersonpl576 they can have class keyword and still doesn't have classes, if the class keyword is just syntactic sugar.

[@hashtags_YT]

@@mikumikudice It's pretty much what I meant since I added it right after that point, not to mention that self in Lua cannot be used outside of a function with colon notation, but regardless thank you for the correction.

[@itzmeB2]

My god i never knew there was a language easier to learn than python, Lua truly is an underrated language

[@skyhappy]

It's....beautiful, even more than python. And not just that, but even faster, if this vid is correct.

[@bobuccman1424]

@Linux user i can confirm its usually 3.2x times faster than python (lua 5.2.1 vs python 3.9.8)

[@internetsfinest8839]

@@skyhappy ugliest part about the language is the starting index of 1

[@nosmirck]

@@internetsfinest8839 and the lack of typing... I can see one easy falling into the same javascript nonsense.

[@skyhappy]

@@internetsfinest8839 I disagree, humans start counting at 1, not 0

[@SpiteAnims]

Lua is simple and easy to learn. Perfect scripting language to implement if anyone is interested

[@nikolaievans2432]

Its also a unsafe and exploitable scripting langauge since exploits can use a dll to hack into the c++ code

[@MiguelGoncalves-yk3sc]

@@nikolaievans2432 any language can be exploited. it's not unsafe if you do good practices

[@RodolphoArrudanogoogle]

That array index starting at '1' reaction was hilarious. 🤣 1:32

[@skaruts]

I agree it's greatly underrated. Its flexibility is amazing. I've hopped around through many languages over the past 15 years, never really feeling comfortable about any. I tried Lua some 4 years ago, and at first I struggled a bit with the 1-indexing, but it didn't take long for me to really settle for it. Coding in Lua is a breeze. I only stopped for about a year because I thought it wasn't fast enough for my gaming projects, but eventually I went back and I found out it was just my bad implementation being bad. Lua, at least with LOVE/LuaJIT, is actually really fast. Lua being a simple language is also a plus. When I got back to it after that long pause, I still remembered almost everything about it. And it's also the one language I can go for days or even weeks without needing to check something in its documentation.

[@cyberlawit8891]

Wow bro thanks for information

[@jameswashington4704]

man lua is so fucking fast. learning to work around the JIT's nuance + storing data in c types will give you ungodly performance you would not believe. People really dont understand how fast this language can get. Those benchmarks showing near C and sometimes faster than C speeds are real.

[@pixelstriko1642]

I agree on lua's flexibility and simplicity, in lua everything just feels really straight forward, i feel like my only limit is the speed of my hands and the language is fast, where as in other languages i feel like i have to do roundabout techniques to get what i want, also lua's first class functions are a huge plus, its painful for me to use a language without first class functions at this point. Edit: also tables and metatables really deserve more credit, they can do the job of what in other languages you'd have like 4+ things to do it, for example tables can function as: arrays, dictionaries, structs, enums, etc.. and if you learn metatables (easier than they seem) you can emulate classes if you really wanted to, but because of how unbelievably flexible lua ls you wont even feel like you need to, its honestly really sad how it stagnated

[@Forcoy]

I also love lua for how common it is in sandbox games Be it Roblox (how I discovered it), Gmod, ComputerCraft, you name it. Its quite common in that niche.

[@SkyyySi]

You can define dictionary tables without the `["index"]` syntax. That is only required for using non-standard names (like ones containing special characters) or when the key you want to assign something to is dynamic (for example, you want to assign specific keys from a loop, but you don't know the key name at that point). This syntax works as well (and from what I understand, seems to be the convention): `local t = { x = 4, y = 2 }`. You can also access table fields both using `varname["key"]` and a more "object"-asque syntax with `varname.key`.

[@WackoMcGoose]

Exactly. Roblox even _encourages_ using object-style syntax with tables (if the key is a valid variable name, just alphanumerics and no spaces, you're golden for nesting keys as far as you want, and in fact that's literally how accessing game objects in the DataModel natively works, they're functionally just tables inside tables). I got quite good at scripting back when I was still interested in the game, and even made a few ModuleScripts (libraries) for referencing Terrain voxels (which natively have to be accessed using stud coordinates for some reason???) using more reasonable "one voxel, one index over" coordinates, aka how Minecraft and literally all other voxel engines read and write their data structures...

[@edupazz]

Just like Javascript

[@cheesebusiness]

JavaScript flashbacks

[@fgsaldanha]

I had no idea that such a relevant programming language was created in my country.

[@gsvf]

somos brabos :)

[@quequeque57]

Nem eu.

[@GuilherHast]

Brs mandando a ver.

[@baraodesantos9993]

Elixir tambem é br

[@clehpton]

@@GuilherHast Mano, não posso ver nenhum canal gringo que tem mais outros brs por lá kkkkkkkkk

[@fabimawn]

So glad I came across this language a while ago, becuase of this video! I like the extreme portability and simplicity. Making games and desktop apps (that don't need to be super secure, or don't need to cummunicate with a lot of outside devices (printers, routers etc.)) with this language is pretty painless and straight foreward.

[@Topher7lol]

This video helped me understand Tables a bit beter, thanks Fireship!

[@langamerdev]

It was my first language to deal with, I modded so much things on old Gmod servers in Lua, most of the CS:S and OrangeBox games (based on Source 1 before the BIG source 1 update that killed 120 tick servers...) used Lua to give the community the ability to create plugins ! Loved this one Jeff, thanks for the memories :)

[@Stevesteacher]

Lua is close to being my favourite programming language, especially when it comes to game dev, it is what encouraged me to continue making those types tutorials, since doing it in Lua is quite fun

[@AkshayKumarX]

You are giving me some encouragement to finally sit down and try learning a new language and get back to programming. Question, does LUA only work with C, or it can work with other languages too? Is there a downside to doing that?

[@fbiagentmiyakohoshino8223]

i have learned lua for 5+ years, and all those 5 years were on roblox by this point i have basically mastered lua and wanted to go to other languages like c# and c++, then my lua brain broke when i saw their syntax.

[@Stevesteacher]

@@AkshayKumarX You can use Lua on its own as well! I'm not really sure if Lua works with other languages, but most languages will have some sort of library that will allow you to execute it in some way ;)

[@_lod]

@@AkshayKumarX there are a few Lua bindings for other languages like C#, java, rust and other ones

[@heyoudodobird]

how to script: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZfRXqSDoahrbJY

[@KuruGDI]

Some time ago I wanted to contribute to an open source program. For this I had to learn LUA. I really started to love it for it being so simple yet so powerful.

[@djxoxta]

I was thinking during the video and lua was my first contact with lua progamming bots for Tibia, amazing and very easy language 🇧🇷

[@qrzone8167]

My first encounter with Lua was on roblox, I was probably only 9 or 10 at the time but even at that age I was able to grasp the absolute basics, that's how simple Lua is. A few years after that I attempted to get into minecraft modding, but the absurd amount of work required to just do anything in Java immediately made me gave up because it was so much more fun to use Lua and especially roblox's engine which basically makes the barrier of entry to being a gamedev absolutely non-existent.

[@pinkdiscomosh2766]

Every time I watch one of these 100s videos, I makes me want to diver right into what ever it's about. Most of the time lol. Lua seems very interesting. Great video

[@B1GTM4N]

I've heard of Lua once when I was in college, didn't think too much of it. Watching this video has piqued my interest again -- insanely awesome! I think it's incredibly powerful, that Lua has a C API that allows developers to run Lua code in a C program, and vice versa. Great -- how am I suppose to get my work for the day done now? 😂

[@nonominox]

This happpens to me every single time I discover something new 🤣

[@CyberPunk38]

I also thought Lua was just a meme. But a lightweight interpreted language sounds very interesting...

[@SrIgort]

But be aware that although the "run Lua code in a C Program" part is very easy to do, the "run C program in lua code" will require a lot of binding work.

[@victor95pc]

about running C inside an interpreted language is nothing new really, most language has support to it, Ruby for example has a lot of libs(gems) that uses C to speed up the code

[@Youkakun]

@@victor95pc It's called FFI (foreign function interface). This technology is present in all jit (just in time) compilers of various languages (see JNA for Java or cffi in python/pypy). It binds at runtime instead of compile-time so calling bound functions is a bit slower.

[@_mickmccarthy]

Ugh, now I'm getting docked hipster points for my preferred language being covered on this channel! ;) Understandable omitting the use of metamethods & metatables given the 100 second overview, but they are a very powerful concept that allow you to (amongst other things) write in an object-oriented manner also. Definitely worthwhile exploring for any folks interested in picking up Lua

[@GabrielLima-gz8zg]

Popular programs that uses Lua in some way: - AwesomeWM (Window Manager) - Neovim (text editor) - Wezterm (terminal emulator)

[@michaelborges5204]

Eu programo em Lua já alguns anos e sempre enjeto código C no meio. Fica super legal para os propósitos que eu preciso, aínda mais para sistemas de embarcação!

[@nerd2544]

what do you use lua for? embedded system?

[@witherin-_-3712]

"famous for being underrated" this is some infinite iq humour

[@gamerobotjimmy]

Lua was my first real language, but for doing certain things I learned some other languages, because I assumed that since those languages are more popular, they must be better; now you have blown my mind.

[@ilyasb4792]

Lua is a really cool programming language, some would even say that beginners should start with Lua and not Python for an introduction to programming.

[@seadrown6252]

I started with lua, making games on ROBLOX. I now do lua and python, (lua due to Roblox and python due to GCSE computer science), and I have to say I do enjoy lua more. It's syntax is very easy to pick up

[@ZephrymWOW]

Lua is a bad first language if you are not doing it for fun or planning on doing video game development. It teaches you bad habits and is very different from the majority of "real world" applications.

[@light_creations]

@@ZephrymWOW Bad habits?

[@nwa8169]

@@light_creations Using globals by default for starters

[@XKMetralhaDO]

@@nwa8169 I started with lua in college

[@Saikocide]

lua was one of the first languages that i tippied my toes on when i was 12, i got inspired by roblox games and i wanted to make one myself, and it didn't work out

[@thrill3272]

Roblox lua was one of my first languages as well lol

[@ScipiPurr]

Back when I was still first learning programming I got super burnt out on C/C++ over the years. Lua was the language that reignited my love for programming and games development. It can be such a joy to use!

[@inserteunnombreapropiado9079]

Same history: I started to learn programming with C++ and it was hard. I mean, got many of the concepts of programming, but it wasn't funny. Then, I wanted to learn how to make games in Roblox and win money and I got to learn Lua. Now I don't make Roblox games, but I use Lua for pretty much any programming task I want.

[@drk3249]

Sometimes I just wish there was more than 1 channel like fireship, or more jeffs/people running fireship to produce more high quality videos and tutorials on every technology

[@dalekman8945]

This vid came at the perfect time for me. Since I'm just starting to work my way up to building a working config in neovim - and need to learn just enough lua to get by. I knew next to nothing about lua except for the array indexing weirdness, and now I have a much better grasp of the 'Lua Philosophy' now. Thanks Mr. Ship!

[@skaruts]

I suppose it's worth noting that you can in practice use tables with zero indexing, with the caveat that you compensate for it in *for* loops (e.g. subtract 1 from the limit, as in *for i=0, width-1 do)* and keep in mind you shouldn't rely on *#* to get the length of that table, because *#* doesn't take the index 0 into account (or else keep in mind the length of the table will be *#table** + 1).* This is usually not a problem, though. When I started out in Lua I found it a bit confusing to know when I should use 1 and when I could safely use 0, but it didn't take much time to get it figured out.

[@fidelguajardo5990]

I really like functional programming. At the moment I am really loving Elixir. I hope you can cover it in the near future. Thank you for all your GREAT content!!!

[@matj12]

@@ChristophBackhaus I think that functional programming goes well with object-oriented programmming. Scala is an example of that. Such style is possible even in Java with streams, records and some elements of pattern matching, but it's annoying there because streams are single-use and there needs to be a lot of boilerplate.

[@brnuovncs]

Coincidentally it's a Brazilian language too!

[@heyoudodobird]

how to script: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZfRXqSDoahrbJY

[@VaughanMcAlley]

The best thing about Lua is that its devs are academics who have been working on it for a very long time now. They think really hard about whether new features are useful, and go to a lot of trouble to implement features in a coherent and efficient way. In other words, their main focus is creating a good language rather than a popular language.

[@ExtemTheHedgehogLol]

This is the greatest video ever, now I know a lot more about Lua than I already did :0

[@Apollo1_]

would love to see some scala stuff too! great content as always

[@HarmonyIsDead]

Lua has to be one of my favorite programming languages.

[@skyhappy]

Why so

[@HarmonyIsDead]

@@skyhappy It was one of the first languages i could properly code in. also it was pretty easy to learn.

[@周杨-r1c]

Can you tell me what interesting things you do with Lua?

[@HarmonyIsDead]

@@周杨-r1c i made a really bad discord bot this one time

[@creamcheese5328]

​@@周杨-r1cyou can make anything you can imagine

[@surajrawat4204]

Wow I learnt Lua literally in 100s.

[@1hsl]

learnt in 50s on 2x 😎

[@lakshman587]

@@1hsl Converted the video into 2x speed and watched in 2x speed And learnt in 25sec 😎😎 Lol! 😂

[@SolathPrime]

@@lakshman587 convert the 2x2x to 2x2x2x to learn it in 12.5 secs

[@brentambrielcabigas1086]

Skip to the end, learn *instantly* 😎

[@samn4730]

@@SolathPrime converted the 2x2x2x into 2x2x2x100x and learned it in 0.125 seconds

[@FireSiku]

Lua starting arrays at 1 is a very interesting thing because it was a logical design choice based on INDEX, so if your array has one item, it should be 1. I feel like the reason why C arrays started at 0 has been lost to time. It did that because it was an OFFSET. C arrays were a pointer at a memory address of the first item. So address+0 is the first item, address+1 is the second item, etc. Most languages dont even operate like that anymore so it doesnt make sense anymore.

[@bit2shift]

"Most languages dont even operate like that anymore so it doesnt make sense anymore." That's where you're wrong. Any language that compiles down to native machine code still has to deal with arrays being 0-indexed. A language with 1-indexed arrays like Lua naturally incurs a small performance penalty on each array access since it needs to subtract 1 from the array index before accessing the underlying memory location, unless, of course, said language chooses to reserve the 0th array element to store array metadata.

[@JoaoPaulo-ox6pr]

Lua was my first contact with a programming language, i had about 12 years and just knew back then "Lua is used on Roblox, then if I learn Lua, i can make a roblox game", but i stopped learning it as soon as i started due to loss of interest. After about 3 or 4 years later i started to learning python, i ve had a very good experience, as expected, but then, when i was learning Django, i've discovered that was better to learn HTML+CSS+JS first, because, even with decent abilities in python, i couldn't build anything interesting without this knowledge, then, i stopped with python for a while and started to learn Javascript in the pandemic. Recently i learned React, and here i am now, preparing to study node.js(and maybe another framework such Electron or Next), then i must return to python to finish something i couldn't finish before.

[@vicradon]

Perfect timing. I'm writing a Lua related article on O3DE(formerly Lumberyard). Thank you Jeff.

[@ARandomSub]

LUA was really fun to learn when I was making WoW mods. It became a meme at my company where I would suggest we rewrite the front end of our entire application library in LUA at almost every standup meeting ha

[@gaeel330]

Fitting that, on St Valentine's day, you post a video about my first and only programming language crush

[@_mickmccarthy]

Sounds like a perfect reason to check out the LÖVE videogame engine/framework! It makes use of Lua for all of its scripting

[@gaeel330]

@@_mickmccarthy That's actually how I got started with Lua, yeah

[@mohwe1007]

Using lua for modding games is ducking amazing

[@waffos8055]

The only reason I knew of Lua before this is because I got bad coder achievement in Garry's Mod

[@endgamerplays]

Wait, it’s used in GMod?

[@waffos8055]

@@endgamerplays i think so

[@doodle1244]

@@waffos8055its used to code addons

[@codex8797]

As a Brazilian it's cool to know that there is a Brazilian programming language (that is actually good)

[@victorhsluiz]

There's Elixir as well (and it's becoming very popular)

[@mr.boloso8296]

Indeed

[@SrIgort]

Indeed

[@codex8797]

@@SrIgort indeed

[@SrIgort]

@@nollix You're trying too hard to be a jerk, this is cringe

[@hdtlab]

This language looks cool actually. Lua can be found in most industrial embedded devices like sensors, PLC, and HMI development toolkit. I still don’t get why it is so underrated.

[@Pyrohawk]

Its underrated because Google chose Python, and a lot of really important libraries followed suit. I believe in Lua supremacy.

[@iamunamed5800]

@@Pyrohawk I mean its just true. The only thing Lua is really missing is more popular libraries. If it had that it'd be a solid competitor to Python.

[@dmitrykargin4060]

​@@iamunamed5800 LUA is intended to be a simplest-but-functional scripting language to be added to your C program. It is not self-sufficient by design. LUA must drop this simplicity principle to be able to become self-sufficient and be able to compete with python. It will effectively prevent LUA being LUA.

[@bishwajitkar2165]

I use Awesome window manager as daily driver in my debian machine, which is fully written in Lua. So I had to learn a little bit of it in order to customize my desktop to my linking. I found it super easy to get my head around quickly and had a lot of fun configuring (after coming from Qtile which is written in Python).

[@maryllcastelino]

I use AwesomeWM too!

[@teststuff2962]

as someone who has been learning game dev on roblox for a while n is taking a cs class where python is being taught i can guarantee that lua is so much easier to learn

[@dubber889]

@ 1:37 "It starts an index from 1 instead of 0" Matlab : Finally, a worthy opponent, our battle will be legendary!

[@mfaizsyahmi]

Funnily enough I learned Lua when I was an admin on a Wikia (now Fandom) site. Did some cool stuff with it, like parsing a bespoke record format I created to draw tables, which is nigh impossible with wiki markup. Things went sideways and I left but the things I learned on the Mediawiki environment I'd always cherish. Lua being the scripting language of choice of many programs like VLC and Garry's Mod makes it easy for me to dip my toes into them too, as I approach them as a returning Lua coder instead.

[@thewitheredstriker]

holy shit I'm pretty sure I recognize you -- aren't you the guy who made Notiplus?

[@heyoudodobird]

how to script: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZfRXqSDoahrbJY

[@sinom]

'dynamic language' and 'no type annotations are required' are two different things. You can write a C++ program always using auto etc. but it still isn't dynamically typed.

[@galewallblanco8184]

but auto still is type annotation, no?

[@RobertWildling]

Those fancy fluid logos - who makes them? And how? Any chance you could make a short tutorial about those? Really, really beautiful!

[@talkysassis]

In Davinci Resolve (Or Fusion) you can just make a Fusion template with nodes and change the source image. Then you can reuse this template.

[@georgespaceagency9894]

Coding in Lua makes me happy for no reason, just gives me a simplicity vibe, feel good aura.

[@CryptoIgnition]

0:53 "To install it, install it" *Very* *useful* *information*

[@pezvonpez]

he said "to get started, install it" smh

[@DookyButter]

@Fireship, do Django in 100 seconds! Lua is completely underrated. I played around with it to show my kids how to build their own Roblox games, and it was a joy to work with.

[@doccampbell2006]

Fun fact, you can put functions within tables to mimic classes, you can even use a special metatable keyword in a for loop to create new copies of the class. All my years of programming games in Defold are paying off 😂

[@PauloCesar-td9xo]

As a brazilian developer I'm astonished to not being aware of this, as always great content!

[@Polaroid1995]

Elixir was also created in Brazil !

[@snk-js]

me too, that's mind-boggling

[@anonymousboii9095]

It would be appreciable if you can make full length Lua programming series or suggest some best tutorials for this language.😊

[@hadawardgz]

You can also create an index on a table just giving the key name and value: *local foo = { bar = 1 };* *print(foo.bar);* PS: *local* is practically mandatory in terms of best practices.

[@TuXAPuK]

His showing true right way to create dicts! `local foo = { for = 1 }` - unexpected symbol error `local foo {["for"] = 1}` - works always fine! Never do bad code!

[@hadawardgz]

@@TuXAPuK bad code would be to use reserved words as a key, but anyway, yes, you can also use indexing to create keys

[@daiangan]

It is also used in Adobe to create plugins for products like Lightroom and Photoshop.

[@savejeff15]

1:37 ... i'm head out.

[@ch1caum]

I'd also add that lua has proper tail call recursion, so you can use functional paradigms without bloating your stack (yes I'm looking at you python) - and this was before funcional programming was hip.

[@appropriate_name1]

0:28 why everyone who talks about lua always forgors garrys mod

[@salem5919]

Because it mainly uses C++ functions

[@gabrieleduardogomes6304]

​@@salem5919 But roblox client uses c++ too

[@MiguelGoncalves-yk3sc]

not very famous game i never heard about it

[@RemoteEvent3]

@@MiguelGoncalves-yk3scmainly called gmod

[@DoctorBones1]

ive been a scripter in lua for around 2 years and im suprised that i was still able to learn new things from a very short video on something i am already very experienced at

[@Gruak7]

I'd love to see a video about fp-ts library for functional programming in typescript. It (un)suprisingly gains a lot of traction right now, at least in terms of npm downloads per week.

[@alexanderd.7818]

0:08 There is one problem though, unlike C it’s not really portable. There are JIT and interpreters for widespread implementations but for anything different you’re on your own.

[@str8454]

actually it's as portable as c89 (you just need a c compiler for target platform)

[@alexanderd.7818]

@@str8454 Yep. The only issue that writing efficient JIT compiler is far more difficult. Inefficient one might be implemented quickly enough but its performance would be 1/5 of desirable, if not worse.

[@nickchapsas]

So we'll all just gonna ignore that this guy convinced 1M+ people that 100 seconds = 2:30 minutes?

[@Krucifus]

Right? If you're going to be precise with 100 seconds, why not either A) limit the video to actually be 100 seconds or B) just be honest and say 150 seconds?

[@СлавкаПайталова]

Yes

[@paifu.]

0:05 21 keywords (reserve words) vs 33 0:16 Virtual machine matches closely to the C language 0:38 1 Data Structuring Mechanism called a { Table } 0:45 Multi tasking with coroutine 1:00 Dynamic typing

[@CelticVampireQueen]

I can't believe KZbin thinks I don't know Lua yet they know how to manipulate me to watch even after midnight.

[@akashdoppalapudi3548]

Man! I've never known that a language existed with these many features and syntax easier than python.

[@_quixote]

It's still hard

[@pesterenan]

Of course we from Brazil would start counting from 1, instead of 0, you know, like *_everyone does..._*

[@softwarelivre2389]

That's actually not that good, because it messes up with offsets. *ptr + index * offset won't work properly, you'll need to do *ptr + (index - 1) * offset, which is not great.

[@softwarelivre2389]

@@ribethings even so, if you have a 2**n array, you'd need 2**(n+1) bits to store it. That's generally not good.

[@Imevul]

First introduction to Lua for me was World of Warcraft modding, but nowadays I use it only for programming stuff in modded Minecraft (CCTweaked, OpenComputers). Oh how I despise meta tables though. I've been doing OOP for so long that my brain is wired to think in classes. It's a neat language though, as long as you're open to think a bit differently.

[@Platypus_Official]

damn, i didn't know it was this simple. I think my imagination was overcomplicating it because of all the objects and things in Roblox studio, but the language itself is pretty easy, thanks for giving me a new POV.

[@OctavDev]

I love that I started using Roblox's Luau to get started on programming. Now I create stuff in Java too.

[@notletiuldawg]

Also lua has something like classes yes, but you need to have metatables and etc Example: local clss = {} clss.__index = clss function clss.new() return setmetatable({}, clss) end function clss:hi() return "hi mom" end local a = clss.new() a:hi()

[@gamemoves2415]

No one cares.

[@Zartymil]

why are you writing "clss" instead of "class"?

[@vitor.torino]

@@Zartymil so you don't confuse it for the keyword 'class'

[@enivo2363]

@@gamemoves2415 I do

[@coffee-is-power]

Lua é a linguagem mais fácil de aprender :) Nunca pensei que ia ter um video sobre a linguagem lua aqui

[@Baileyeatspizza]

Roblox uses their own version of Lua. Called “Luau” it adds onto Lua but heavily restricts a lot of the file and operating system apis to fit the roblox sandbox environment the key feature of Luau is that it adds types to Lua

[@liamdormon7822]

Most platforms use their own version of it sandboxed and customised for the intended environment

[@jxl721]

also every optimization they've done, it's really amazing

[@_lod]

it's open source too so you can use it in your projects :D

[@futuza]

I used lua for my game's scripting language (the engine is written in C++) and it made letting other less coder devs get involved in the coding and make useful functions without having to understand the nasty engine stuff. It has been great. I really love how simple it is while retaining a c-like syntax. My only complaint is that it indexes at 1, only thing I'd really want to change about it is make it index at 0, like every other normal language. Everything else is pretty intuitive and sensible. Would highly recommend using it as a scripting language for a game, but don't have much experience using it for other things.

[@Tnt0gamer]

Lua was the first language I learned by messing around with it in Roblox. Now every time I use Java for school I think about how the same thing could've been done in 1/2 amount of lines and time with way better readability. It's a blessing and a curse.

[@DanFMN]

lua was one of the first languages I learned and it’s awesome!

[@skyhappy]

Why so

[@macjukej]

Finally a Lua episode. This language is great, fast, even easier than Python. Everything is just one data structure (tables). Worth to know there's an upvalues limit of 60 variables.

[@zetekol3359]

60 only in luau, in lua there is no limit on upvalues

[@skaruts]

I presume this depends on the limits set by the host program. In TIC-80 there's a limit of 200 local variables.

[@zetekol3359]

@@skaruts in lua source there something like "#define maxlocalvariables 255" (255 is max because thread can store only 255) and same thing about upvalues

[@johnswanson217]

I'm really getting to love functional programming paradigm. I wish more functional languages get more famous for big industries. I admit objects are useful in so many cases. But strict class based OOP is just too much stress for me. Yet I quite enjoy writing prototype based OOP in Javascript.

[@raianmr2843]

Most mainstream languages are getting more and more functional. I don't think any particular existing functional language will be super popular any time soon - and they don't need to be for the most part.

[@bepamungkas]

try toying around with ramda..

[@guigazalu]

@@raianmr2843 Well, with the new compilers like HVM that can make code of exponential order run in linear time, I think functional languages are getting their place.

[@raianmr2843]

@@guigazalu They already have their place, there's literally people running serverside code in CPython - performance was never an issue that kept functional programming from getting mainstream. This is more of a cultural thing.

[@heyoudodobird]

how to script: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZfRXqSDoahrbJY

[@SpaceVr-Live]

it is so underated, people think its so hard to code with lua but it is super easy to do

[@NotePortal]

Yeah lua is very easy, it's what got me into programming.

[@SpaceVr-Live]

@@NotePortal same

[@blanknaemguy]

I've only ever used Lua for ROBLOX and Garry's Mod scripting, but it seems interesting. Great video!