Is learning lua programming bad?

Question

Over the past few months I've been learning lua. One day my dream is to program real video games. I've been working hard learning it but a few days ago my friend said nothing and no one uses lua, and that if I want to make games I need to forget lua and learn c++. It bums me out because I like lua and have already spent months learning it. Is my friend true? :(

Answer 1

Lua isn't used by *nobody*, and there are plenty of platforms that can Lua can be used to write code for. However, I'd recommend a language such as C++ or C# because these are capable of much more high-tech stuff. If your dream is to become a game developer, a simple language like Lua won't get you very far.

Answer 2

Lua is getting a fair amount of traction as an extension language - it's relatively easy to write a program and make it extensible by adding plugins and addons written in Lua. So it's not true that "nothing and no one" uses it.



However, your friend is correct in that C++ has more of the concepts (classes, etc) that you'll need to know for game programming.

Answer 3

Not at all. Lua is used for a great deal of gaming. I have a book called "Learn Lua for iOs game development" that is about using just Lua for creating iOs apps lol.



It's fine to stick with Lua, and only learn what you have to know if you aren't interested in it :P.

Answer 4

http://www.roblox.com/develop?rbxp=8285911 Is a great example of what lua can be used for. Lua is not a bad programming language nor is basically any language. Each programming language has their limits for uses and their wides ranges of what they can be used for. C++ can not be used for firmware but other programming languages can. I suggest not to push aside certain programming languages and try to accept them all,.