Why developers like Lua

What is Lua?

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.

Lua is a tool in the Languages category of a tech stack.

Lua is an open source tool with 1.4K GitHub stars and 451 GitHub forks. Here’s a link to Lua's open source repository on GitHub

Who uses Lua?

Companies

416 companies reportedly use Lua in their tech stacks, including Shopify, Tokopedia, and ROBLOX.

Shopify

Tokopedia

ROBLOX

doubleSlash

Affirm

Avito

Kong

useinsider

Venmo

Developers

1021 developers on StackShare have stated that they use Lua.

AMDouglas UK

projecteuler

My Stack

orangleliu statck

My Stack

Netfilter

Lua Integrations

pgvector, Google Code Prettify, Starship (Shell Prompt), Corona SDK, and Crown are some of the popular tools that integrate with Lua. Here's a list of all 15 tools that integrate with Lua.

pgvector

Google Code Prettify

Starship (Shell ...

Corona SDK

Crown

Apache SkyWalking

Devo

MoonScript

Crossbar.io

Pros of Lua

Fast learning curve

Very easy to embed in C programs

Efficient memory usage

Open source

Good for game scripting

Pretty simple to learn

Quick to code

Simple Language

Syntax is amazing

Supported in most game engines

Coroutines

Can be used for a wide variety of development

Decisions about Lua

Here are some stack decisions, common use cases and reviews by companies and developers who chose Lua in their tech stack.

Ricky Rodriguez

May 18, 2023 | 11 upvotes · 49.6K views

Needs advice

C++

JavaScript

and

Lua

I want to learn a coding language so that I can get a job right out of high school I'm currently 15 and a half. What should I learn and where, and where should I look for jobs with little to no experience in coding jobs? From what I've seen my top 4 coding languages to learn are C++, JavaScript, Python, and Lua.

Gamerians TV

Apr 26, 2021 | 5 upvotes · 253.9K views

Needs advice

C++

JavaScript

and

Python

Hello, I am interested in learning how to program. I am a beginner, and many articles saying I should go with Python if I am new to programming. I considered Lua a long time ago, but for my career, I believe major programming languages should be better for me. I'm considering Python at this moment, but if you have other tools I should use, let me know.

Rogério R. Alcântara

Software Developer · Jan 9, 2021 | 8 upvotes · 340.2K views

Needs advice

Neovim

and

Vim

For a Visual Studio Code/Atom developer that works mostly with Node.js/TypeScript/Ruby/Go and wants to get rid of graphic-text-editors-IDE-like at once, which one is worthy of investing time to pick up?

I'm a total n00b on the subject, but I've read good things about Neovim's Lua support, and I wonder what would be the VIM response/approach for it?

Gamerians TV

May 21, 2020 | 6 upvotes · 413K views

Needs advice

Java

Lua

and

Python

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!

See all decisions

Blog Posts

E-Commerce at Scale: Inside Shopify's Tech Stack

Jul 3 2018 at 4:40AM

Shopify

+17

36259

How Mashape Manages Over 15,000 APIs & Microservices

Sep 25 2015 at 8:45AM

Kong

+26

15957

How imgix Built A Stack To Serve 100,000 Images Per Second

Aug 28 2015 at 9:58AM

imgix

+26

10746

Lua Alternatives & Comparisons

What are some alternatives to Lua?

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.

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.

Arduino

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software.

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

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.

See all alternatives

Related Comparisons