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Lua

Powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language
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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 1.5K GitHub stars and 448 GitHub forks. Here’s a link to Lua's open source repository on GitHub

Who uses Lua?

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

Developers
1062 developers on StackShare have stated that they use Lua.

Lua Integrations

pgvector, Google Code Prettify, Starship (Shell Prompt), Corona SDK, and Zed are some of the popular tools that integrate with Lua. Here's a list of all 15 tools that integrate with Lua.
Pros of Lua
41
Fast learning curve
26
Very easy to embed in C programs
26
Efficient memory usage
20
Open source
19
Good for game scripting
9
Pretty simple to learn
8
Quick to code
8
Simple Language
7
Syntax is amazing
7
Supported in most game engines
6
D
2
Coroutines
1
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.

Needs advice
on
C++C++JavaScriptJavaScript
and
LuaLua

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.

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Needs advice
on
C++C++JavaScriptJavaScript
and
PythonPython

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.

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Rogério R. Alcântara
Needs advice
on
NeovimNeovim
and
VimVim

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?

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Needs advice
on
JavaJavaLuaLua
and
PythonPython

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!

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Blog Posts

GitHubDockerReact+17
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GitHubPythonNode.js+26
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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

Lua's Followers
1007 developers follow Lua to keep up with related blogs and decisions.