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.

What a fun language

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?

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.

The best book on LUA ever.

First of all, I am impressed with this book. It is easy reading. The technical content is cohesive. It flows from one topic to the next in a smooth logical manor. The writers did a very good job of directing the text to me, the reader, and not to empty space. I have been programming with real time embedded systems since 1975. My first programming experience was writing assembler code in Octal for an Intel 8080a processor. Since those days, I have had the opportunity, or the misfortune as some would say, to read volumes of manuals. Most manuals were written by the supplier of the CPU, such as Intel, Motorola, Zilog, TI, ST Micro, etc. To say the least, the information was mostly there. Although it took an enormous amount of time to `extract' the information. The point of this, is to say time is precious. Having to read a manual while under a time deadline is not much fun. So when I began reading Lua Programming by Jung and Brown, was I pleasantly surprised! It is as though the writers were in the room talking directly to me. Not talking to empty space, but actually talking to me, the reader. Because they took the time to write clearly and concisely, this book will be in my library with my 8080a assembly language primer.

However before I finish, I feel that I must address an injustice. At this time, there are two other reviews of this book, those reviews did a terrible hack job in the form of a review. It appears nothing more that an amateurish attempt to discredit a fine book. Since both refer to the exact same book, I can only image they were paid to write those disingenuous reviews.

I would honestly rate this book as a solid 4.5 for the above mentioned items. But because of the two hacks, I shall rate the book a 5 to right the afore mentioned injustice.

Not a simple approach to learning Lua.

Book is in excellent condition. I haven't finished all the content but it is a good introduction to LUA if you are like myself and have never programmed lua but are familiar with how programming languages work.

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.

The book has a bad format, source code has all underlines, besides that, it talks about using Lua to a Palm device, I remember use such device last century.....

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

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; kleiner

Sprachumfang, modular, prozedural mit objektorientierten und funktionalen Aspekten, Coroutinen und

einfach 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 ausführlich

dokumentiert sind und viele Anregungen geben. Die Themen reichen vom Datenbankzugriff über Grafik bis hin zu

CGI-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, dass

man schon mal ins Grübeln kommt...

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