Lua VS Erlang

Compare Lua VS Erlang and see what are their differences

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Lua

Powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language

Erlang

A programming language used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability

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2023-01-29

We recommend LibHunt Lua for discovery and comparisons of trending Lua projects.

Landing page //
2023-05-09

We recommend LibHunt Erlang for discovery and comparisons of trending Erlang projects.

Lua

Website: lua.org
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Erlang

Website: erlang.org
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Lua features and specs

Easy to Embed
Lua is designed to be embedded within applications. It has a simple C API which allows it to be integrated easily with C, C++ and other languages.
Small Footprint
Lua is lightweight, with a small memory footprint. This makes it ideal for use in resource-constrained environments, such as embedded systems and game development.
Fast Performance
Lua is known for its high performance due to its efficient interpreter and just-in-time compilation capabilities provided by LuaJIT.
Simplicity
The syntax of Lua is simple and clean, making it easy to learn and use. It's designed to be both powerful and simple.
Extensibility
Lua can be extended through libraries written in C or other languages, allowing for a lot of flexibility and functionality expansion.
Dynamic Typing
Lua uses dynamic typing, which can make code more flexible and easier to write without the need for explicit type definitions.

Possible disadvantages of Lua

Limited Standard Library
The standard library in Lua is relatively small compared to other programming languages, which can result in the need for additional third-party libraries.
Niche Use Case
Lua is not as widely adopted for general-purpose programming compared to other languages such as Python or JavaScript, which might limit community support and resources.
Error Handling
Lua's error handling mechanisms are somewhat rudimentary compared to languages that offer advanced exception handling like Python or Java.
Lack of Type Safety
While dynamic typing offers flexibility, it also introduces the risk of type errors at runtime, as type mismatches can only be discovered during execution.
Concurrency Limitations
Lua does not have inherent support for multithreading or concurrency within the language itself. It relies on external libraries or specific environments to handle such tasks.

Erlang features and specs

Concurrency
Erlang is designed for massive concurrency and supports thousands of lightweight processes, making it ideal for applications requiring multiple parallel operations.
Fault Tolerance
Erlang provides robust support for fault tolerance, with built-in mechanisms for process monitoring and error recovery, leading to high system availability.
Distributed Computing
Erlang's architecture facilitates distributed computing with easy support for building scalable, distributed systems across multiple nodes.
Hot Code Swapping
Erlang supports hot code swapping, enabling developers to update code on a live system without requiring a system restart, which is crucial for continuous operation.
Functional Programming
Erlang’s functional programming paradigm leads to simpler code with fewer side effects, improving maintainability.
Strong Community
Erlang has a strong community, with a wealth of resources, libraries, and frameworks that support developers in building efficient systems.

Possible disadvantages of Erlang

Learning Curve
Erlang has a steep learning curve, especially for developers who are not familiar with functional programming or its concurrency model.
Syntax
The syntax of Erlang can be unfamiliar and challenging to new users, which may hinder the initial coding experience.
Limited Libraries
Despite having a strong community, Erlang has fewer libraries and tools compared to more popular languages, which may limit development options for certain applications.
Performance Limitations
While Erlang excels in concurrency, its performance for compute-intensive tasks might not match that of languages specifically optimized for such operations.
Niche Use Cases
Erlang's strengths in certain niches like telecoms and real-time systems might not translate well to more general or varied software development tasks, limiting its adoption.

Lua videos

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Is Lua A Good First Language To Learn?

Erlang videos

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Book Review - Erlang in Anger

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Lua and Erlang)

Erlang

Programming Language

77 77%

Programming Language

23% 23

OOP

71 71%

OOP

29% 29

Generic Programming Language

79 79%

Generic Programming Language

21% 21

Medical Practice Management

100 100%

Medical Practice Management

0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Lua and Erlang. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Lua seems to be a lot more popular than Erlang. While we know about 23 links to Lua, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Erlang. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Lua mentions (23)

What do I think about Lua after shipping a project with 60k lines of code?
I would start at https://lua.org/ I'm creating a set of libraries to make Lua into a (still lightweight) application language https://github.com/civboot/civlua. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
How Programming Languages Got Their Names
Lua means 'Moon' in Portuguese, as it is also their logo: https://lua.org. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
Where can I learn lua
The official lua website is a pretty good place to go! As well as lua users & tutorials point has a really good tutorial for lua too! The official site may be hard to understand at time (it was for me at least) but that’s why I gave you the other two. they’ll explain it simpler/better than the official site may sometimes. Hope this helps! Source: about 2 years ago
A Weekly Class for PICO-8 Beginners
1) Who Should Sign Up? - People with no, little, or intermediate skills in programming or PICO-8. 2) What Will We Cover? - Fantasy Console Paradigm: The Full Overview of What PICO-8 can do. - Lua and the uses of its modified API within PICO-8. Programming, 101. 3) What to Expect - A full game all your own! - Brought together in a 4-8 classes, in live teaching sessions in which you can interact with... Source: about 2 years ago
data types in function definition
I have tried a few thins but no luck and found nothing on the web, also looks as if lua.org main forums no longer exist. Source: over 2 years ago

Erlang mentions (2)

Perfect Elixir: Environment Setup
I’m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
What is Calypso?
However, as Elixir is inherently tied to the BEAM and Erlang/OTP, it means that it has features like immutable variables (though you can rebind them and have state via process loops, e.g. Agents or GenServers). This also means that OTP is the main "application framework" for Elixir/Erlang. In my opinion, OTP is a pretty good design philosophy for applications, but sometimes it's just kind of hard to set up or wrap... - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago