
Ravi: A dialect of Lua with optional static typing and JIT - RossBencina
https://github.com/dibyendumajumdar/ravi
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as-j
Ravi catches my interest, then frustrates me. The Lua 5.4* compatibility
statement. “Well we’re 5.3, we forked 5.3 I don’t agree with a minor 5.4
detail so we’re stuck on 5.3” It’s similar to LuaJIT stuck on 5.1.

I don’t think it does the Lua world any favors to be stuck on so many
versions. It causes extra work for library developers, makes for poor code
samples, and confusion for new adopters. It’s not like Lua is moving quickly
with versions either. Every ~5 years for a minor version?

*) yes I know 5.4 is brand new.

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anonymoushn
Lua does not use semver. Every minor version is a breaking change like
changing the way function environments work, adding integers and integer
division, or adding <const> and <close>

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cassepipe
"My motivation is somewhat different - I want to enhance the VM to support
more efficient operations when types are known. Type information can be
exploited by JIT compilation technology to improve performance. At the same
time, I want to keep the language safe and therefore usable by non-expert
programmers."

Seems very promising. I will try it.

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artemonster
Astrologers proclaim the week of Lua. Amount of Lua-related posts doubles!

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azhenley
Anyone know how it compares to Luau, which is also on the front page right
now?

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anonymoushn
One major difference is that you can download it, run it, and edit the source
code.

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anonymoushn
This is a cool project, and I find the documentation quite useful. However, it
is a tough sell to say that the JIT only works on the main stack, where almost
none of my code is run.

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ravi-delia
I am...interested.

