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  5. Erlang vs Lua

Erlang vs Lua

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Erlang
Erlang
Stacks1.4K
Followers749
Votes345
GitHub Stars11.9K
Forks3.0K
Lua
Lua
Stacks2.5K
Followers1.0K
Votes180
GitHub Stars1.5K
Forks452

Erlang vs Lua: What are the differences?

<Introduction>
  1. Concurrency Model: Erlang has built-in support for concurrency and distributed systems, with lightweight processes (actors) communicating via message passing, making it ideal for building scalable and fault-tolerant systems. Lua, on the other hand, lacks built-in support for concurrency; developers need to use external libraries or frameworks to achieve similar functionality.

  2. Strong Typing: Erlang is a dynamically typed language with strong type checking at runtime, ensuring better error handling and preventing type-related bugs. Lua, however, is dynamically typed without strong type checking, leading to potential type-related issues that may arise during runtime.

  3. Metaprogramming Capabilities: Lua offers powerful metaprogramming capabilities, allowing for features like metatables and metamethods that enable customizations and extensions of its behavior at runtime. In contrast, Erlang does not provide as extensive metaprogramming features, limiting the level of runtime customization available.

  4. Garbage Collection: Erlang employs a sophisticated garbage collection mechanism that includes strategies like generational and incremental garbage collection, optimizing memory usage and performance in long-running systems. Lua uses a simpler form of garbage collection, potentially leading to less efficient memory management in certain scenarios.

  5. Community and Ecosystem: Lua has a vibrant community and a wide range of user-contributed libraries and frameworks, making it easier to find resources and support for various programming tasks. Erlang, while known for its robust infrastructure and telecommunications applications, has a smaller community and may have more limited resources available compared to Lua.

  6. Language Features: Erlang includes features like pattern matching, fault tolerance mechanisms, and hot code swapping, which are specifically designed for building highly reliable and scalable systems. Lua, being a lightweight and embeddable scripting language, focuses more on simplicity and ease of integration with other systems, catering to different use cases compared to Erlang.

In Summary, Erlang and Lua differ in their concurrency model, typing system, metaprogramming capabilities, garbage collection strategies, community support, and language features, catering to different programming needs and priorities.

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Advice on Erlang, Lua

Gamerians
Gamerians

May 21, 2020

Needs adviceonLuaLuaPythonPythonJavaJava

I am trying to make Roblox game which requires Lua. I quite don't want to go with Lua just because other tools just might let me do more projects later on. I heard that Python is most similar to Lua, but I am still not sure which tool to use. Java, I think it will help me with many stuff later on for websites, projects, and more!

470k views470k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Erlang
Erlang
Lua
Lua

Some of Erlang's uses are in telecoms, banking, e-commerce, computer telephony and instant messaging. Erlang's runtime system has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance. OTP is set of Erlang libraries and design principles providing middle-ware to develop these systems.

Lua combines simple procedural syntax with powerful data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible semantics. Lua is dynamically typed, runs by interpreting bytecode for a register-based virtual machine, and has automatic memory management with incremental garbage collection, making it ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
11.9K
GitHub Stars
1.5K
GitHub Forks
3.0K
GitHub Forks
452
Stacks
1.4K
Stacks
2.5K
Followers
749
Followers
1.0K
Votes
345
Votes
180
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 62
    Concurrency Support
  • 62
    Real time, distributed applications
  • 58
    Fault tolerance
  • 36
    Soft real-time
  • 32
    Open source
Cons
  • 1
    Languange is not popular demand
Pros
  • 41
    Fast learning curve
  • 26
    Very easy to embed in C programs
  • 26
    Efficient memory usage
  • 20
    Open source
  • 19
    Good for game scripting
Cons
  • 4
    Nooby
  • 2
    Not widespread
  • 1
    D
  • 0
    Python

What are some alternatives to Erlang, Lua?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

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