Ask HN: Why isn't anyone using Openresty

[ksec]

It is based on set of modules and Nginx, as well as LuaJIT. It is insanely fast, and according to http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r5 It is constantly one of the top performing frameworks.

Why isn't anyone using it? Are there pitfalls that i am not aware of?

[nyan_sandwich]

I plan to in some upcoming projects, because I'm a Lua nut, but here's why people might not use it:

* Lua syntax can get annoying and is pretty low level (no list comprehensions)(I switched to moonscript[1])

* Lua has no libraries or established support community compared to eg. python. You have to do a lot yourself.

* Performance isn't the most important concern for most people.

* Openresty isn't really a "framework", it's pretty barebones. (Lapis[2] looks like it should help)

[1]: http://moonscript.org/

[2]: http://leafo.net/lapis/

[egeozcan → nyan_sandwich]

I dream about something like SailsJS[1] written on Openresty. Only if I had some more time...

[1]: http://sailsjs.org/

[mhd]

What turned me off (at least the last time I looked) was the project setup. Or the lack thereof, as it seemed like the whole "application" was intrinsically mixed in to the nginx configuration. It seemed more like a way to write nginx plugins than your usual webapps. If I'd see a way to do a more WSGI/Plack/Rack-like setup, I'd probably look again. Performance seems very nice, and while not my favorite language, it's certainly more sane than Javascript...

[MichaelAza]

Probably because no one heard of it (I sure haven't) and because Lua is just one of those love-or-hate languages that not everyone can use. I couldn't use Lua or Go, for example, if my life depended on it.

[zimpenfish]

Well, I am.