Beginning Lua Programming

Very good but for someone like me, a true beginner, not basic enough. Step-by-step assumes more prior knowledge than I have. Example: step 3 - Open directory. My reaction: Ummm....how?

This is a fantastic book and one that I find myself re-reading. The strength is in the long-form exercises and conversational tone. It's kind of a better, lighter weight version of "Programming Principles and Practice in C++".Example: In one of the exercises the authors side-effect a variable; that is, they changed the value of something that was outside of the function. Then, the spend a couple of paragraphs discussing the pros and cons of doing things like that.This is found throughout the book and it highlights its value: As a book on how to think like and be a programmer.I WISH that they'd update this for Lua 5.2. Lua 5.2's _ENV feature is well-worth exploring in an educational context and I know that these authors would do an excellent job of it.-ANdrew

I bought this book a few years ago and finally got around to reading it all the way through. It has a lot of information but a lot of stuff that was missing was complete explanation to using Lua within "C" applications. I came across the same material on various websites and it bothered me. However there are other great things about this book. It teaches how to use Lua in multiple ways such as web servers, stand alone scripts, etc. I wouldn't recommend this book to someone who is just starting to program because it can be intimidating based on size alone.

Kindle formatting is a little rough. There are clearly areas where the scanned text was not proof-read carefully. That said, it's a very clearly written book and the examples seem to be constructed so that they build on one another in logical ways. I'm getting from it what I wanted. I just wish they'd taken some time to do some quality control on the converstion to Kindle format.

What a fun language

I would say not for a beginner like me and it is based on LUA version 5.1.1 so it is outdated now .

Excellent. Easy to understand.

Definitely a programmers guide. More intense than a beginners guide. Could see this used as a text book for a Lua programing class.

A good book to accompany the LUA for windows [...]

From the previous review I bought this in some trepidation, but I needed a guide to Lua straight away so it had to be available on Kindle. Generally Wrox books are pretty decent so I decided to risk it. The first chapter regarding installing Lua and compiling it yourself is probably the worst chapter in the book (and I'm guessing is the reason for the poor review) - once you get beyond that and onto the actual language itself, things get a lot better. I have found Lua itself a great and simple language and this book has definitely been useful.

Lua è un linguaggio di programmazione molto semplice ma molto diverso da tutti quelli con cui ho lavorato (C++, C#, Swift). Ho provato a studiarlo con altri testi più brevi e veloci di questo ma in generale si limitavano a illustrare la sintassi e il risultato è stato pessimo: con Lua non puoi applicare da subito gli stessi schemi mentali della programmazione ad oggetti, è richiesto un approccio diverso per cui va capito in dettaglio prima di poter essere utilizzato proficuamente. Questo libro invece spiega in dettaglio il senso delle cose e ti aiuta a capire veramente cosa c'è dietro Lua e come usarlo. Lo consiglio vivamente a chi vuole imparare questo linguaggio.

Ich stieß auf Lua, als ich meine Programme mit einer Skriptsprache erweitern wollte und war zunächst skeptisch -Assoziative Tabellen als Namespaces, Metatables? ... Inzwischen finde ich Lua einfach nur noch genial; kleinerSprachumfang, modular, prozedural mit objektorientierten und funktionalen Aspekten, Coroutinen undeinfach erweiterbar mit Funktionaltät der Host-Applikation und externen Bibliotheken (in Lua oder C - leider,denn ich bin ein überzeugter C-Hasser; eingebttet ist es aber in Delphi).Lua gibt es für alle Plattformen und ist open source. Außerdem gibt es inzwischen eine große Community und viele Foren.Das Buch beleuchtet alle diese Eigenheiten von Lua mit vielen kleinen Beispielen (im Netz runterzuladen), die verständlich und ausführlichdokumentiert sind und viele Anregungen geben. Die Themen reichen vom Datenbankzugriff über Grafik bis hin zuCGI-Anwendungen (f. Web-Server); dazu werden die z.T. benötigten Bibliotheken ausführlich incl. Installation erläutert.Allerdings sollte man vom Programmieren schon mal was gehört haben - einige Progrämmchen sind so raffiniert, dassman schon mal ins Grübeln kommt...10 Sterne

ottimo per chi si avvicina per la prima volta a questo linguaggio particolare che sta vivendo una seconda giovinezza grazie ai molti tools orientati al mondo mobile che stanno nascendo in questi anni, la qualità dei libri wrox è sempre molto alta, lo consiglio veramente.