urn VS Yuescript

There's many different languages that can compile to Lua: - TypeScript is probably the most well-known and most compatible language for Lua. The TypeScriptToLua compiler lets you compile TypeScript code into Lua with a mostly 1:1 conversion. You can use the @jackmacwindows/craftos-types and @jackmacwindows/cc-types NPM packages to add typing declarations for CraftOS APIs and modules. Alternatively, use my template repo for a more ready-to-go setup. - Haxe was built with compilation to Lua in mind, and so you can write code for it and have it run just fine in CC. There's some declarations for it available online, and I also have my own typing set for it (which I should really upload somewhere - DM me if you want it for now). - C# can also compile to Lua, but it's a bit tough to get working right in CC, as it has a huge default library and abuses the global table in a way that CC has trouble with. However, it's possible to use, and I've gotten it working in the past (unfortunately, I don't know how anymore). - Urn is a Lisp dialect that was built by two CC devs and was designed to run in CC. However, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're good with functional programming.

Also, if the microcontroller you're working with is an ESP32 chip, you may be able to use use one of the lisp-to-Lua transpiled languages (urn or fennel) with something like Lua RTOS or NodeMCU. Not entirely sure how well this works in practice, but in theory it should be possible. Of the two, Fennel's probably more likely to behave well when used like this because it's more like a thin translation layer on top of Lua, but Urn's probably going to feel more comfortable to use because it feels like this weird mix of CL and Racket design.

Urn Lisp, A Lisp implementation on top of Lua: https://urn-lang.com

I don't know how much of reloading you need. I did something like that many moons ago. See here: https://github.com/SquidDev/urn/issues/12

Clone Urn: wget run https://gist.githubusercontent.com/SquidDev/e0f82765bfdefd48b0b15a5c06c0603b/raw/clone.lua https://github.com/SquidDev/urn.git (or similar)

I'm a big fan of moonscript, but occasionally wish it was still be improved and worked on. Yuescript¹ looks like it fixes most of my bugbears with moonscript, and it is largely a faster² drop-in replacement.

There was s little discussion here ~18 months ago³, but it will largely circular if you look as people are suggesting fennel there ;)

¹ https://github.com/pigpigyyy/Yuescript

² This probably only matters if you have tonnes of moonscript, not just a little neovim/mpv/awesomewm config or something.

³ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29903133

There's also some languages made to compile straight to Lua: - MoonScript is the most popular Lua wrapper - it's built to be more Python-like, featuring indentation-based scopes, function calls without parentheses, lambda syntax, list comprehension, and much more. - Yuescript is a modern update to MoonScript that adds more features (I haven't used it myself, so I'm not entirely sure exactly how it differs from MS). - Teal is a version of Lua that adds static typing for better code standards.

Yes, this is unfortunately true.

There's a spiritual successor: https://yuescript.org/

Yuescript in yellow

What I didn't know about is that its fork YueScript is actively maintained, and with some extra features.

I've put together a Lua config with Neovim, but it was still kind of obnoxious to put together. Lua isn't that great of a language, because people seem to forget it's an embed-able language for a reason (it's not supposed to give you tons of features). Using something that makes some of your more complex problems easier like Moonscript or Yuescript can make things more complex in regards to your configuration.