What do I think about Lua after shipping a project with 60k lines of code?

a year ago

Lua was chosen for Craftomation 101 due to its integration with the Defold engine and lightweight builds for educational platforms like Chromebooks.
Key surprises with Lua included the lack of increment operations, 1-based indexing, and functional programming influences.
Lua's 'everything is a table' approach simplifies coding but can lead to bugs if references are misunderstood.
Performance in Lua is generally good ('feels like fast'), with few cases requiring C++ optimization in Craftomation 101.
Lack of static typing in Lua led to runtime errors, but QA processes helped stabilize the game.
Future projects may stick with Lua but adopt better module organization and automated testing.
Defold's fast build times (4 minutes for 60k lines) and CI efficiency were highlights.
Alternative languages like TypeScript or Luau were considered but deemed less viable due to unofficial support in Defold.
Defold is expanding language support with transpiler options (e.g., Teal) and native C# bindings, though Lua/C++ remain primary.

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