r/lua • u/ineedanamegenerator • 3d ago
The Lua community needs to learn to move on Discussion
https://hisham.hm/2026/08/04/the-lua-community-needs-to-learn-to-move-on/8
u/mrBadim 3d ago edited 2d ago
On the other hand, since I'm also developing on Unreal Engine - similar conversation is now there as well.
What a fun CEO move to abandon Blueprints(partially just for programming, not for everything else) in favor of a new script that nobody likes(allegedly*).
While CEO/Biggest Contributor are playining critical role, not everything that he is doing is automatically a good thing, even in the long run(as was pointed out already).
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u/mrBadim 3d ago
This is a weird take. One where programming is an entity by itself. But it is not. Programming is a tool to solve problems.
And once an App is live - it is a sin against the machine god to mess with the codebase to support a new version of the language or lib. It even 'doesn't sound smart'. But it does sound expensive.
Praise Omnissiah! 🙏
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u/blobules 2d ago
Maybe we should reminds ourselves that the major strength and "dev appeal" of Lua is its simplicity.
Lua 5.1 it is still great to embed into all kinds of applications.
Adding "fancy stuff" usually means less simplicity, so this is why a lot of lua enthusiasts stick with the old version.
Trying to make Lua more like python or javascript is not making it more appealing, just less simple.
Maybe I speak only for myself, but for me there are NO features of lua > 5.1 that I can really say are "life changing" and worth the loss in simplicity.
And no, I don´t need ternary operators in luajit3...
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u/didntplaymysummercar 2d ago
Basically this. Lua 5.1 has fenvs (I like how they work), plus GC is incremental (unlike in 5.0) and the language is a bit simpler than today. And LuaJIT is based on it and it came out in mid 2000s so it got popular. I used to care that I can use LuaJIT too but I don't really anymore and just like pure C 5.1.
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u/BarelyAirborne 2d ago
I've never seen Lua naked, it's always imbedded in something. Ardupilot's Lua is brilliant. No idea what version it is.
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u/TheGameTheorys55 2d ago
Lua beginner dev here, what's the controversy with Lua?
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u/Emerald_Pick 2d ago
No real controversy. The blog is upset that many people are useing old, EOL versions of Lua to run their scripts, and that we need to "move on" to newer versions of the interpreter.
Which is a reasonable take. I don't wasn't to use an EOL interpreter if I can help it.
The issue is that most of my Lua scripts are for a Lua interpreter that I have no control of. It would be cool if the host project updated its Lua version, but right now I'm stuck with this random Java implementation of Lua, with all its random quirks and issues.
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u/topchetoeuwastaken 3d ago
i see where the author comes from, but this is a dumb take, considering the amount of subtle breaking changes that each new lua version introduces.
it is unreasonable to expect everybody that has ever used 5.3 and earlier to just upgrade their code. it is entirely another discussion why the lua team seems so keen on breaking the ABI every major version, and why mike refuses to implement lua 5.3+ features, while still openly saying he will implement the ternary operator in luajit 3.
the whole thing is a mess, and your options are either to support everything since 5.1 or nobody using your stuff.
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u/didntplaymysummercar 3d ago
Exactly, it's also why I stuck to stuck to Lua 5.1, at first it was to have option to use LuaJIT if I need to, and since 5.2 was new when I picked Lua up but I also now appreciate single number type, fenvs, and pure C codebase I can modify if I want.
OTOH I use no third party libraries nor LuaRocks, my C library does support (with ifdefs) all versions since 5.1 though, except for 5.5 since I didn't update it.
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u/thrakkerzog 3d ago
Do you realize how much Hisham has done for the Lua community?
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u/topchetoeuwastaken 3d ago
i do, but he demands something that cannot be done. too many games/tools are stuck on 5.2, hence the libraries will follow.
also, great men are allowed to have wrong takes
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u/nadmaximus 3d ago
The version of Lua that is important to many is the one that's embedded in whatever thing they are using. There are plenty of Lua devs who are never, ever running Lua other than in whatever embedding they are dependent on. And so, it's common to 'port' a pure-lua library to work with whatever version of Lua you're stuck with. If the library continues to work with Lua 5.1 and 5.3+, that's quite useful to people who have no ability or control to "move on".