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Comment by danellis | Hacker News Reader

<<we had built a custom minimal runtime that “transpiles” JavaScript code to Lua and runs that Lua code on a Lua VM.>>

What's the point? Why not just write Lua instead of JavaScript? It's a better language anyway. This 'JavaScript everywhere' fad is just pandering to people who are too lazy to learn another language.

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Because the group they are "pandering" to is huge. What you're asking is "why would a company looking to sell a product use a hugely popular platform to do so, when there's a much better, little known and barely understood platform available?".

One man's "pandering" is another man's "responding to the market".

If you're going to make comparisons, you need to compare the ecosystems and not simply focus on specific details. Focus on being clever at the system level, not on the line of code level, and you will be considered great.

Lua's ecosystem is nowhere near as mature as JavaScript's.

Did you read the article? It's about how there isn't a Lua VM anymore on the new hardware

Did I read the article I quoted from? Yes. "Anymore" is the key word. I'm questioning the need to have JavaScript at all when they started out with a perfectly good language. Their problem wasn't that there was anything wrong with Lua; the problem was in transpiling JavaScript to it.

Don't have time != lazy, but that's a different argument. One of the cool things on this new one is it runs Rust, arguably the best language for this purpose, so you don't have to use JavaScript if you think it's stupid

What do you mean by "runs Rust"? Rust compiles to native code. The old one could run Rust code too.

Rust will be supported by the tools the same way JS is. `tessel push` will run the cross compiler, and Rust libraries will be provided to access the hardware and modules.

Yes, you can get to the underlying Linux system and run anything you want (including Lua), but the point is to abstract away the OS so you only have to think about your code and the hardware.

Genuine question. What makes Lua a better language than JavaScript?

Native coroutines & LuaJIT? Not sure, the languages aren't really better or worse than each other. Lua has no libraries so it's irrelevant.

Also, 1 indexed arrays which offend some people.

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