Planet Blender

The first rule of Lua.
goplexian.com | animation, modeling, scripting - 2010-02-16 23:45:00

This is a follow up to an article I wrote titled "Why nobody talks about Lua" it's funny how sometimes little questions like that can turn into big discussions, because its not even a week later and that post has had over 10,000 views and generated something over 200 comments through various forums.

So I wanted to capitalize on my success do a brief review today of how the various communities viewed the question and what their answers were, especially the responses from the Lua community itself through the Lua-list.

The highest voted comment on reddit with actual content was from munificent and he wrote:

1. It's small. You can learn everything there is to know about Lua pretty quickly.
2. It moves slowly. There isn't a lot of hot new Lua tricks to blog about.
3. The existing documentation is fantastic.
4. Because it's embedded in other apps, there isn't a lot of "here's something useful" stuff that applies to all Lua users.

No one talks about screwdrivers either.

Interesting comment, but I dont entirely agree that these are the main reasons we don't hear much about Lua because there are other small, slow moving, excellently documented, embeddable type of applications which are popularly talked about online. For example sqlite satisfy's most of those criteria.

The highest voted response on HN was by Chipsy, who said:

I have trouble finding a use for Lua, even though I like it better as a language than most.

The problem is that it isn't a good "starting place" for an app. Instead you write something in C/C++ and say "oh, I wish I had a dynamic language for this part" and then you add Lua on top. And this is part of why Lua is such a compelling language now - by being extension-focused it's been able to iterate the entire language many times over and make basic semantic changes without worrying about backwards-compatibility.

But if I start writing an app and want something Lua-like....it ends up being easier to start in Python. There are some good projects out there to address this but it's a question of maturity - as of right now Lua still doesn't really satisfy as a "batteries-included" platform.

This is a great description of how Lua is used I think, but I do not agree that this is the main reason why people do not talk about Lua because just like before I can think of other examples which also fit this general description yet get a lot of attention online.

A commenter on this blog, Steven, wrote:

"I think it's in part because Lua first became big in the game industry, which is not known for its openness and is still dominated by the large players. Many game companies guard their IP religiously, and often the developers are under NDAs. You won't see them organize a friendly neighbourhood somethingCamp to share and learn.

This is certainly true, yet I'm sure there are a number of popular bloggers who work for large company's and somehow manage to blog about tech which excites them without disclosing company Intellectual Property, so again I don't see this as being the main reason why Lua discussion isn't more popular online.

After having read  the comments and thought about this matter for a couple days I decided that I would bring this question to the Lua-list and see what the actual Lua community had to say about the matter.

The difficulty though with mailing lists is that they lack the voting mechanism so you have no real way to determine if a given comment is relflective of a single individual or the community as a whole

The first reply I got on the list made me laugh though, dcharno wrote:

"I didn't understand the article. Lots of people use and talk about Lua. It serves a specific niche in application development. The Lua team is happy with the language. What is the issue?"

If you are jaded skeptic like me you might at first think this person is just being oblivious, or doesn't want to show weakness or something else similarly cynical, but it is my opinion now that this general sentiment is shared by a fairly large segment of the Lua community and that when they say things like this they are speaking sincerely.

After thinking about the responses I got on the Lua-list for a while I was lead back to ask a more general question: "Why do people talk about programming?".


I can think of at least 5 reasons why people talk about programming languages, and I think the answer to the question of "why nobody talks about Lua" can be found when we look at the major reasons why people talk about programming in general.

1. Perceived online popularity will increase adoption percentage for new programming projects (say that fast five times). For those projects struggling for mind share and trying to break into the big leagues lots of online discussion is rightly seen as an essential for growth and success.

Lua though has no confidence issues, it has already been used in more video games than all of the other major scripting languages combined, and nobody needs to see crowds of happy bloggers in order to be convinced of this fact. So Lua developers see little need to proselytize about the language in the same way other projects attempt to do.

2. Talking and writing is a means of reinforcing learning. After delving into something interesting and emerging from the other side victorious it is natural to want to do a bit of a victory dance, and for a certain segment of people this mean writing about it on our blogs.

Lua though is small, simple, easy to learn, with great documentation. This makes those types of victory dances much less frequent.

3. People like love to complain. I'm Canadian, so I find complaining a bit difficult, but I do think it is an entirely valid reason to communicate. If you don't like the way a certain something works then why not discuss it? I think most everyone agree's that the best thing to do is to fix it yourself, but that isn't always possible or practical even in the world of open-source.

I know the Lua community is probably not going to thank me for this, but I think complaining is probably an area where Lua discussion could be dialed up a few notches. Again and again a common complaint made in the comments was that Lua's standard library isn't that great, and that it is one of Lua's major hurdles. Lua doesn't come with batteries included, etc etc.  If you take a look at the list of Lua's standard libraries, and compare that with the Go's standard libraries, you'll see what people are talking about. This is the major reason why people say that Lua, despite being a great language, isn't so great for stand-alone development.

It has been this way for years though, and the developers aren't likely to fix this any time in the immediate future but hopefully improvements will continue to be addressed.

4. Genuine passion. If you really love something you can't help but talk about it, and as crazy as it sounds there are people out there who actually love programming languages and code. Personally I don't understand how anyone can have emotional feelings about code, but then again it is psychologically well documented that people grow in affinity as they grow in familiarity, the better you know something the closer you feel to it.

But people don't often discuss a screwdriver, they just use it. Mind you though there is a big difference between leaning how to programming and learning how to use a language. It takes a lot longer to learn to program than it does to learn a language. If you haven't gained proficiency in Lua in a couple weeks then you are probably lacking some fundamental programming knowledge, in which case Lua can be a great teacher and something worth writing online about, but you wouldn't really be talking about Lua you'd more be talking about learning to program and just happen to be using Lua.

5. The final reason why people write about programming is because of the internet driven childish hype culture. Reaching for a 'whats hot' tag, looking for their 2 minutes of fame.

In many of the comments on the Lua-list there was a strong resentment to this type of hype culture which is so dominant on the internet today, it almost seemed to border on unwritten internal policy that hype for the sake of hype was completely unacceptable and actually attracts the wrong crowd.

So as funny as it sounds it seems "The first rule of Lua is you do not hype about Lua, Lua doesn't need you to hype it, and Lua doesn't want the sort of people who are attracted by hype."

For what its worth I think that's a good enough answer, funny though that I would get this answer from a community made up largely of game developers, an industry where hype is usually the order of the day. ;)

This little foray into the world of Lua has opened my eyes quite a bit, Lua is certainly an interesting language, and an even more interesting community, and I think that if you're getting your feet wet in programming, or you are a seasoned developer contemplating adding scripting to your project, then Lua has a lot to offer you not least of which is a great and down to earth community. Wait, is this hype?

Self-generated
ArtofInterpretation.com: Recent Images RSS Feed - 2010-02-16 22:00:00

An exploration of portrayals and perceptions of selves. My entry for this past weekend's Blender Artists Weekend Challenge # 373 ("self-portraits" theme). Technical note: As always, pure Blender internal render.

graphicall: Blender 2.5 Alpha1 is here! Splash Screen: http://pasteall.org/pic/1320
Twitter / graphicall - 2010-02-16 18:22:35

graphicall: Blender 2.5 Alpha1 is here! Splash Screen: http://pasteall.org/pic/1320

Tip: Viewport Snapping
Blender Tutorials Downloads Videos & Education - Blender Cookie - 2010-02-16 17:52:26

This quick Blender 2.5 video tip demonstrates how to use viewport snapping to lock the viewing angle to any 45 degree increment. This feature is similar to the viewport navigation that is found in ZBrush.

http://blendercookie.com

Durian: Community Modeling Sprint!
BlenderNation - 2010-02-16 16:20:21

Details can be found on the Durian blog.

Contest - Eco Design
4RTE DIGIT4L - 2010-02-16 15:50:00

Eae Pessoal!!

Finalmente, terminei a minha imagem para o Contest Eco-Design organizado pelo site Blender Brasil! Que tinha como objetivo criar uma imagem estática referente ao tema "Eco Design", que retrate um problema ecológico local, regional, nacional ou mundial.

Foi um mês inteiro para modelar todos os objetos da cena, e mais de 9 gigas ocupados no HD! E a renderização ficou por conta do LuxRender, que durou cerca de 10 horas!

Espero que gostem!

Community Modeling Sprint!
Durian Open Movie Project - 2010-02-16 15:10:37

Hello Blender Community!

Are you a Blender user with some modeling chops? Do you have dreams of fame and fortune? Have you been watching Durian from the sidelines wishing you could be more involved? And have you been frustrated that we haven’t given you the opportunity?

WEELLL, Nathan’s here to announce an upcoming event that you won’t want to miss!

We’ll also be sporting a live video feed from the Blender Institute!

In looking over potential blender model sites to use for this it was pretty difficult to chose. There are a few really great options! The Blender Model Repository is a great resource, and certainly has the fullest library of models. What sites do you guys use the most?

To recap:

When: Saturday, February 20th, at 2:00pm GMT+1 (Amsterdam) 1:00pm GMT
Where: At your computer
Why: For eternal glory!

Join the #blenderdurian channel on the FreeNode IRC network. (Refer to Getting Started in Blender IRC if you’re not familiar with irc.)

Visit http://www.blendswap.com/ and register an account to be able to submit. Thanks to mofx for helping us out!

And wait a couple days for us to post the list of models! Thanks to cwebb (not Samuel L. Jackson, actually) for the inspiration.

Later!

–Colin

Surrealist Music
BlenderNation - 2010-02-16 13:44:40

By Roman a.k.a artiztz This interesting, surrealist statement about music was recently posted, amongst other works, on blenderartists for us to enjoy! Roman writes: Hi, my name is Roman. I’m from Riga, Latvia. I graduated from the Department of Graphics at the Academy of Arts. I started 3D graphics relatively recently, about two years ago. At work it was necessary [...]

Olympic Games!
Montage Studio - 2010-02-16 12:27:10

Hey guys, Js here.

I’m in Amsterdam right now, working on the Durian project titled ‘Sintel’. You can of course follow our progress on the short movie here: http://durian.blender.org The movie is progressing well in the last few weeks. Some big news are going to be annonced on the blog over there this week. So make sure you give it a look everyday!

On other news, Olympic Games started in my home country Canada. I hope everyone is having a good time following their country progress there What does olympic have to do with this blog you ask? Well, Olympic games are associated with alot of people watching it, so obviously company take the opportunity to create ads for them! At the studio where I work in Montreal ( www.deshed.com ), we created a serie of ads for the company Rona who sponsored the Olympic in Vancouver by providing construction materials and worker to build the different venues.

You can view the ads at this website: www.2010vancouver.rona.ca

The studio did the first one that plays when the website open (codenamed ‘Rona Tape’) and as for myself, I mostly worked on the two ads in the ‘Venues’ section of the website.  I hope you’ll enjoy them

Have a nice Olympic games time!

Js.

Avant Premiere de Plumiferos !
malefico's spot - 2010-02-16 11:42:51

En unas horas estaré asistiendo al Avant Premiere de Plumíferos ! Pronto postearé fotos, críticas y muchos chimentos ! Debería ir de smoking ?

Plumiferos’ Avant Premiere !
malefico's spot - 2010-02-16 11:37:42

In a couple hours I will be attending at the Plumiferos’ Avant Premiere ! Expect lots of pictures and GOSSIP !!!

Should I rent a tuxedo ?

BlenderHR i TOSMI predstavljaju ko-autora prvog Otvorenog Filma
co Creative Clusters - blender - 2010-02-16 10:47:02

U nedjelju, 28.2.2010 u prostorijama kluba net.kulture MaMa u Zagrebu BlenderHR entuzijasti i TOSMI (int. projekt Blender edukacije) predstavljaju jednog 3D umjetnika i ko-autora prvog otvorenog filma " Elephants Dream" - Bassam Kurdali (USA).

read more

2.5 Tour #11
Blender Labrat - 2010-02-16 09:10:00

just a quick rambling tour, not overly much to go over, lots of bug fixes, the most messing in comprehensable tour i have done, just to maily give an update of progress and why certain things have not ben done, and got a few big issues off my chest mainly about spacebar

anyway enough rambling
here it is tour #11
http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_XI.ogg

Mancandy Announces Durian, Part 2
BlenderNation - 2010-02-16 05:00:07

David Bolton brings us another of his Mancandy animations. “Mancandy reflects on the recent festive activities and what they mean to most people, and also gets an update on the Durian project. Warning: contains adult humor, some strong language – not suitable for children under 3 feet 6″. Mancandy announces Durian Part 2 from david bolton [...]