alt Hacker News> 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)
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> 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.
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.