LjTools VS IntelliJ-Luanalysis

I dug a little more and came across this tool which does seem to have the capability to view all LuaJIT Bytecode. https://github.com/rochus-keller/LjTools

> a large lua game code base, over 4000 files, 1.5 million lines of code

Interesting; how do you manage to keep consistency? Do you have special tools to e.g. detect inadvertent global variables? I once wrote a Smalltalk VM in Lua (https://github.com/rochus-keller/Smalltalk/blob/master/Inter...) which is a much smaller code base but even with this size I quickly would have lost track of e.g. scopes and names without tools I had to write myself (https://github.com/rochus-keller/LJTools).

Most of my languages have VM backends; see e.g. https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon; I implemented different backends generating LuaJIT bytecode; a year ago I switched to Mono which is based on ECMA-335; here is a discussion why I switched: https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon/releases/tag/IDEv0.9.0; I implemented utility libraries for both LuaJIT and CIL bytecode; see https://github.com/rochus-keller/LjTools/, https://github.com/rochus-keller/Pelib/ and https://github.com/rochus-keller/MonoTools/. I evaluated many VMs and think the mentioned ones are best suited. There were a lot of challenges with both technologies, what is to be expected, and too much to describe here.

LuaJIT is well suited as a backend/runtime environment for custom languages; I did it several times (see e.g. https://github.com/rochus-keller/Smalltalk, https://github.com/rochus-keller/Som/, https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon/). I also implemented a bit of infrastructure to ease the reuse: https://github.com/rochus-keller/LjTools. LuaJIT has some limitations though; if you require closures you have to know that the corresponding LuaJIT FNEW bytecode is not yet supported by the JIT, i.e. switches to the interpreter; as a work-around I implemented my own closures; LuaJIT also doesn't support multi-threading, but co-routines; and there is no debugger, and the infrastructure to implement one has limitations (i.e. performance is low when running to breakpoints). For most of my projects this was no issue. Recently I switched to CIL/Mono for my Oberon+ implementation which was a good move. But still I consider LuaJIT a good choice if you can cope with the mentioned limitations. The major advantage of LuaJIT is the small footprint and impressive performance for dynamic languages.

Implementing a VM is certainly interesting, but if you just need a fast backend you could generate LuaJIT bytecode (see e.g. https://github.com/rochus-keller/ljtools/ LuaJitComposer.h/cpp).

If you want to re-use LuaJIT as a backend, have e.g. a look at https://github.com/rochus-keller/ljtools

Recently I mostly use https://github.com/rochus-keller/LjTools#lua-parser-and-ide-features

Because of compile-time type safety / static analysis. And I say this as the author of an IDE that bolts those features onto Lua: https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis

I want to start adding support for Lua derivatives to my IDE (which adds static type checking to Lua - inference, structural & nominal types, generics etc. (Luanalysis - https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis/)

I feel like plugin support would be best but I've no idea how that's supposed to work in the presence of a predefined grammar. There's also so many variants I don't think there's a good way to build composite grammar.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to extend language parsing? For reference, I'm using https://github.com/JetBrains/Grammar-Kit.

There's also my IDE which just bolts on types (both structural and nominal) to regular Lua - no transpiling as the types are defined with comments (or inferred).

https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis/

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to give it as much attention as it deserves recently.

What do you mean by no lambdas exactly? Lua supports anonymous functions and those functions capture variables from their outer scope.

I use functional programming extensively in Lua also. Could you elaborate on what it doesn't permit?

Integers were introduced in 5.3.

Assigning operators? It has metatables, you can absolutely implement your own operators.

If you want static typing you can use my IDE: https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis/

Granted, my IDE is incredibly opinionated and not for everyone.

Also, Lua is not my favourite language to use, doesn't even make top 3. However, the robustness of its design, considering its simplicity, is incredibly elegant.

Anyway, you can find screenshots in the project's README on Github: https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes (Post-Covid)

Technologies: Kubernetes, AWS, TypeScript, Ruby, React. Polyglot, refer to résumé.

Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VJk9gs1-LN3e333ZDICwkG5pgTb...

Email: [email protected]

Github: https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamindobell/

Current Role: CTO @ Snaploader

Salary Expectation: $200,000+ USD

These days I describe myself as a full-stack developer, but I’ve also plenty of professional experience with mobile (native + React Native), infrastructure, ops, game development, tooling and reverse engineering. In my free time I also tinker with embedded systems. I’m an avid open source contributor, but also maintain many of my own open-source projects e.g. a Lua IDE which statically type checks Lua (https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis).

I’ve 12+ years of development experience, the last six years I’ve been CTO of Snaploader, a small start-up in Australia which turns floor-plans and CAD drawings into real-time rendered 3D buildings that run in your browser (including mobile). HQ is interstate, thus the role has always been near 100% remote. There’s a team of 20+ 3D artists and sales, but development is a one man show. So I’m responsible for a pretty absurd amount.

I also occasionally take on casual consulting gigs, which typically come about from my open source contributions. Currently I’m consulting for Berserk Games. I work on their Lua language bindings, public API documentation, networking and tooling for the (user content centric) game Tabletop Simulator (Unity/C#). I also help out their developer community with support, libraries, documentation and example projects i.e. developer advocacy.

Please do peruse my Github. I’m after something senior where I can take some ownership, but ideally also contribute across a breadth of projects/technologies.

Me: Okay. I'm just going to prototype a game. Don't want to get carried away. I won't even write a game engine. I'll use Tabletop Simulator.

Friend: Sounds good. How's it going?

Me: Well. I needed to be able to debug my code. https://github.com/tts-community/moonsharp-tts-debug

Friend: Oh, neat. So your game is done now?

Me: Not exactly. I had to had in matchmaking by reverse engineering Steam. https://github.com/SteamRE/SteamKit/pull/704

Friend: Ah. Alright. Can I play it now?

Me: Nah, I was finding it hard to maintain code. I wrote a Lua code bundler. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/luabundle

Friend: Sweet.

Me: Yeah, but I decided to integrate it into the official tooling. https://github.com/Berserk-Games/atom-tabletopsimulator-lua/...

Friend: I'm sure the community will be thankful.

Me: I hope so. I now run a small community of TTS developers. https://github.com/tts-community/

Friend: Right. You must be done by now.

Me: Nah, I couldn't statically type check my code. So I wrote some types. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/tts-types

Friend: Seems unnecessary for a prototype, but sure.

Me: I had to write my own IDE to use them though. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis

Friend: Right... So how'd the game going then?

Me: Oh, I'm not doing that anymore. I now consult for Berserk Games, developers of Tabletop Simulator

Friend: ...

Atom (most basic), Vscode with emmylua (debugging) and tabletop simulator lua, or Intellij with luanalysis (type safety). all are really good depending on your use case. I have never used the scripting window, even for simple scripts.