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Add to SafariWhen comparing Lua vs Clojure, the Slant community recommends Clojure for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” Clojure is ranked 11th while Lua is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Clojure is:
Clojure programmers are highly encouraged to use immutable data in their code. Therefore, most data will be immutable by default. State change is handled by functions (for transformations) and atoms (an abstraction that encapsulates the idea of some entity having an identity).
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Very easy to integrate with C and C++
One of the best features of Lua is its very well designed C API. This is very useful if you have an existing C library you need to integrate with Lua or quickly get a Lua script running on the C side of the game.
Finally Lua plays so nice with C that if you need to optimise for speed you can re-write it in C a lot easier than other languages.
Pro Great documentation
The official Lua documentation is very helpful and thorough. There are also a large number of online resources or books with lots of helpful information for beginners and advanced users alike.
Pro Portable
Lua can be built on any platform with a ANSI C compiler.
Other than that, Lua is extremely small. For example, the tarball for Lua 5.2.1 is only 245K compressed and 960K uncompressed (including documentation).
When built on Linux, the Lua interpreter built with the standard libraries takes 182K and the Lua library takes 243K.
The small size and the ability to build with a C compiler make Lua an extremely portable language that can run on a lot of different systems and computers.
Pro Simple
Easy to learn.
Pro Fast
Lua's performance compares very well to other languages, If performance needs to be further improved you can:
- Implement critical parts in C
- Use the LuaJIT compiler. The LuaJIT compiler is a drop in replacement for the stock compiler and provides significant performance improvements. From the overview page:
LuaJIT speeds can rival code written in C.
Pro Embeddable
Many different game engines (e.g. Elder Scrolls series, ToME) use Lua for scripting, and it's runtime is designed for embedded use.
Pro Clean and simple syntax suitable for beginners
The Lua syntax is modeled from Modula, a language known for being a fantastic introduction to programming.
The Lua syntax also has the following key characteristics:
- Semicolon as a statement separator is optional (mostly used to resolve ambiguous cases as in a = f; (g).x(a)).
- Syntactic sugar for function calls (f'string', f"string", f[[string]], and f{table}) and method calls (obj:m()).
Pro Helpful community
Due to the growing popularity, Lua has a rather large and helpful community surrounding it.
Pro Immutability is the default
Clojure programmers are highly encouraged to use immutable data in their code. Therefore, most data will be immutable by default.
State change is handled by functions (for transformations) and atoms (an abstraction that encapsulates the idea of some entity having an identity).
Pro Minimal syntax
Being a LISP, programs are simple: they're just functions and data. That it doesn't get bogged down with syntax or the loftier FP concepts like monads makes it one of most approachable functional languages for beginners.
Pro Tries to solve problems as simply as possible
Simplicity is one of the pillars on which Clojure is built. Clojure tries to solve many problems in software development as simply as possible. Instead of building complex interfaces, objects or factories, it uses immutability and simple data structures.
Pro Good for writing concurrent programs
Since Clojure is designed for concurrency, it offers things like Software Transaction Memory, functional programming without side-effects and immutable data structures right out of the box. This means that the development team can focus their energies on developing features instead of concurrency details.
Pro Huge ecosystem of libraries to work with
There's a very large ecosystem of high-quality Clojure libraries which developers can use. One example is Incanter. It's a great data analytics library and a very powerful tool for dealing with matrices, datasets and csv files.
Pro Cross platform
Clojure compiles to JVM bytecode and runs inside the JVM. This means that applications written in Clojure are cross-platform out of the box.
Pro Rich Hickey
The creator is so awesome, he's a feature. Just look up his talks and see why.
Pro Dynamic language
A superb data processing language. While rich type and specification systems are available they are optional.
Pro Extensible
Clojure has an elegant macro system which enables language additions, Domain-specific languages (DSLs), to be created much easier than most other languages (with the exception of Racket, perhaps).
Pro Great tool used in automating, configuring and managing dependencies available
Leiningen is a very useful tool for Clojure developers. It helps wiht automation, configuration and dependency management. It's basically a must for every Clojure project.
Pro No C/Java syntax
Refreshing, BTW!
Pro Game is available with which you can learn Clojure
Nightmod is a tool used to make "live-moddable" games. It displays the game's code while you are playing and allows you to inject new code using Clojure. This can be a fun and useful experience for people trying to learn Clojure.
Cons
Con Easy to make mistakes when declaring variables
When writing a function, if a programmer forgets to declare a variable, that variable will be declared at global scope. The code will seem to run fine at first, but if another function uses a variable with the same name, but fails to declare it, it will create subtle, incredibly difficult to find bugs.
Con Some concepts may not be applied to other "mainstream" programming languages
Lua features a prototye-based inheritance model. While this is also used by Javascript, it's not used by many other mainstream languages, and so some of the concepts learned while learning Lua won't be very applicable to other languages.
Another thing that makes Lua different from other programming languages, is the fact that Arrays start at 1 instead of 0. While helpful for beginners, it can complicate logic and make it very confusing when switching languages.
Con Batteries not included
Lua is so small mainly due to many of the components not being included in the core package. A lot of people need the functionality provided by the Lua module management system LuaRocks and libraries such as Penlight.
Con Confusing error messages
Clojure's error messages more often than not are very confusing. They usually involve stack traces that do not thoroughly explain where the error was caused or what caused it.
Con Code tends to be nightmare to maintain for non-authors
Tendency to devolve into difficult to manage mess of styles. Not recommended for professional use.
Con Too cult-ish
Way too niche and in-group behavior, while trying to trash other languages. Only pays for select few, who run the "game" on others.
Con Tied to the JVM and it's limitations
Some language constructs were obviously created as workarounds for JVM limitations. This makes the language much less elegant than it could have been.
Also, the JVM has a very cumbersome FFI.
Con Syntax can be alien / jarring for those used to other Lisps
Perhaps some may consider this attribute an advantage, but I do not. Clojure does not attempt to maintain significant compatibility with other Lisps. So, if you already know a Lisp or are used to the way Lisp works in general, you'll probably be confused if you take a look at Clojure. See these resources for more details on this subject:
