calculator VS Lua

I've been playing with classic BASICs recently, especially dialects for pocket calculators. Here are some random thoughts from this exercise:

"PRINT USING" is terrible (vs. C's formatted strings).

"INPUT A" is not versatile enough. I should be able to prompt with the current value of A, so user can hit enter to keep the current value. None allow you to print the current value of A (INPUT STR$(A)+">",A does not work anywhere). Some dialects allow you to retain A: TRS-80 BASICs do it. MS-BASIC sets A to zero if user just hits Enter.

Pocket computer BASIC allows you to enter an expression as a response to INPUT, such as A+1.

Modern calculators allow you to enter equations in textbook format. I kind of think modern BASICs should support this- no reason to be stuck in the early 60s teletype world.

Pocket computer BASIC allows you to bind programs to keys (or at least entry points to keys: you can have a key jump to a line with a key-label).

Pocket computer BASIC allows you to read the last entered value (AREAD command in Sharp).

Here is a benchmark which shows why these things can be important, at least in the realm of pocket computers and calculators:

https://github.com/jhallen/calculator/wiki

The EventSource uses the Lua language to search for any services with ports set to 80 or 443 in the ‘argocd’ namespace. More examples can be found here.

If you're new to the 12 in 24 series, I'm learning and building projects with a new programming language every month - this month, it's the Lua scripting language. You can find source code for the projects I build in the official GitHub repository (check it out, this week's folder contains code for both this and two other bonus projects!).

This month, we're talking about Lua. It's not always a first choice when it comes to programming, but I think there's a lot to enjoy about this little language. Heck, I'm a big game development fan myself - I would look into it even if that was the only reason to.

It’s Portuguese. It’s the same in the Lua codebase [1].

[1]: https://github.com/lua/lua

If we think we need more flexibility for processing records, we can write our own embedded filters using Lua language. Lua is a highly efficient programming language used mainly for embedded scripting.

Lua

➜ ~ brew info lua ==> lua: stable 5.4.6 (bottled) Powerful, lightweight programming language https://www.lua.org/ /opt/homebrew/Cellar/lua/5.4.6 (29 files, 788.7KB) * Poured from bottle using the formulae.brew.sh API on 2023-05-16 at 11:03:06 From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/l/lua.rb License: MIT ==> Caveats You may also want luarocks: brew install luarocks ==> Analytics install: 16,599 (30 days), 56,745 (90 days), 139,027 (365 days) install-on-request: 1,763 (30 days), 6,266 (90 days), 21,105 (365 days) build-error: 0 (30 days)

I think Lua is a good example of doing documentation well. The source code is commented only as much as needed, mainly with brief comments about things that might not be obvious and a small number of longer explanations of how the architecture works (mainly relevant to developers). It also has a super nice feature that's surprisingly rare: each file has a very short line at the top that describes what the file is, so you don't have to guess based on the filename alone. The API is documented in a single HTML file on the website that has both the high level descriptions of the language and architecture, as well as documentation for each public-facing function. The docs are maintained by hand, but the API is mostly stable, so the docs don't need to change very often.

This is using the Lua language and the Solar2d game framework