> it feels like it departs from what people know without good reasons.

Lua is a pretty old language. In 1993 the world had not really settled on C style syntax. Compared to Perl or Tcl, Lua's syntax seems rather conventional.

Some design decisions might be a bit unusual, but overall the language feels very consistent and predictable. JS is a mess in comparison.

> because it departs from a more Algol-like syntax

Huh? Lua's syntax is actually very Algol-like since it uses keywords to delimit blocks (e.g. if ... then ... end)

▲

lucketone 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I known for very long time that c (and co) inherited the syntax from algol.

But only after long time I tried to check what Algol actually looked like. To my surprise, Algol does not look anything like C to me.

I would be quite interested in the expanded version of “C has inherited syntax from Algol”

Edit: apparently the inheritance from Algol is a formula: lexical scoping + value returning functions (expression based) - parenthesitis. Only last item is about visual part of the syntax.

Algol alternatives were: cobol, fortan, lisp, apl.

	▲	spacechild1 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The use of curly braces for delimiting blocks of code actually comes from BCPL. Of course, C also inherited syntax from Algol, but so did most languages.

▲

lioeters 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> consistent and predictable

That's what matters to me, not how similar Lua is to other languages, but that the language is well-designed in its own system of rules and conventions. It makes sense, every part of it contributes to a harmonious whole. JavaScript on the other hand.

When speaking of Algol or C-style syntax, it makes me imagine a "Common C" syntax, like taking the best, or the least common denominator, of all C-like languages. A minimal subset that fits in your head, instead of what modern C is turning out to be, not to mention C++ or Rust.

▲

procaryote 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Is modern C really much more complicated than old C? C++ is a mess of course.

	▲	lioeters 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't write modern C for daily use, so I can't really say. But I've been re-learning and writing C99 more these days, not professionally but personal use - and I appreciate the smallness of the language. Might even say C peaked at C99. I mean, I'd be crazy to say that C-like languages after C99, like Java, PHP, etc., are all misguided for how unnecessarily big and complex they are. It might be that I'm becoming more like a caveman programmer as I get older, I prefer dumb primitive tools.