It’s okay for those who haven’t heard of Lua. Within the 30 years since its creation, the light-weight, cross-platform programming language has collected followers in arenas comparable to sport improvement, the place it’s used at the side of gaming platforms such because the ultra-popular Roblox. But it surely doesn’t have fairly the identical on the spot identify recognition as, say, Python or JavaScript.
Over the previous yr, nonetheless, Lua has loved a spike in reputation, in line with the newest replace of the TIOBE Index, which measures the “buzz” round programming languages. Lua has damaged into TIOBE’s prime 20 languages, simply behind Perl and Goal-C. (To find out its rankings, TIOBE leverages information from quite a lot of aggregators and search engines like google, together with Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Amazon; for a language to rank, it have to be Turing full, have its personal Wikipedia entry, and earn greater than 5,000 hits for +”<language> programming” on Google.)
“In its heyday in 2011, Lua briefly touched a prime 10 place,” learn the notice accompanying TIOBE’s newest information. “Whether or not that is going to occur once more is unknown. However it’s clear that Lua is catching up within the sport improvement market: simple to study, quick to execute, and easy to interface with C. This makes Lua an ideal candidate for this job. One of many drivers behind the latest success of Lua is the very talked-about gaming platform Roblox, which makes use of Lua as its predominant programming language.”
If you happen to’re excited about studying Lua (or simply changing into a bit extra conversant in it), swing by Lua.org, which presents all types of instruments and assist paperwork. By way of its developer website, Roblox additionally has some attention-grabbing documentation and tutorials on utilizing Lua. The language’s Wikipedia web page is likewise intensive, full with coding examples.
In line with Emsi Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes thousands and thousands of job postings from throughout the nation, the programming languages most in-demand amongst employers embrace SQL, Python, Java, and JavaScript. Nonetheless, at all times keep in mind that many firms additionally want technologists who’ve mastered extra specialised languages comparable to Lua.