What does HackerNews think of TypeScriptToLua?

#lang Lua | Nov 2022

I've had some success with https://github.com/TypeScriptToLua/TypeScriptToLua

Luau may be an alternative as well, haven't tried it.

I love Lua, but at larger scales it's unmanageable.

Nim is used heavily in the gaming industry as a Lua replacement as well.

Window.js is an open-source JavaScript runtime for desktop graphics programming | Jan 2022

One immediate comparison that springs to my mind is the Löve 2D engine [1], which is a tiny game engine written entirely around Lua scripting (so that Lua includes the full game run loop as well).

Lua is a good scripting language, but it doesn't have the ubiquity of JS (and Löve doesn't have the ubiquitous deployment of the modern browser). Also, Lua doesn't have a static type ecosystem (though there are interesting projects like TypescriptToLua [2] exploring that space, but you can from the name they are following/lagging the JS ecosystem here).

There probably is a need to package more browser games as "real" games and a lightweight Canvas-focused approach could find a nice like Löve, especially if it were easier, for instance, to maybe port to consoles for small/indie game teams than one of the web views or Electron. (Though certainly Microsoft already has a version of WebView2 running on the Xbox.)

[1] https://love2d.org/

[2] https://github.com/TypeScriptToLua/TypeScriptToLua

LÖVR – An open source framework for rapidly building immersive 3D experiences | Aug 2021

For those of you who don't like lua but love LOVE2D and want to try LOVR, you can code in typescript and use this[1] transpiler to turn it into lua. Someone already did LOVE2D type definitions, it shouldn't be to hard to make some for LOVR. [1]: https://github.com/TypeScriptToLua/TypeScriptToLua

Neovim v0.5 | Jul 2021

One little-talked about advantage of Lua support is that you can now write your vim config/scripts in one of the various Lua transpilers like moonscript [0], or maybe even typescript [1]!

[0]: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript

[1]: https://github.com/TypeScriptToLua/TypeScriptToLua

[2]: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

I open sourced a game I just released on Steam, written in Lua | May 2021

Löve2d is the best. I actually like to code for it in TypeScript and then use the https://github.com/TypeScriptToLua/TypeScriptToLua transpiler to spit out Lua code. Best of both worlds scenario IMHO. Once my Lua codebase hit 10k lines or so I found it very difficult to maintain. TS has really helped there while maintaining all the dynamism and fun of Lua.

Deno 1.0 | May 2020

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Funnily enough the state of art in typed lua is typescript: https://github.com/TypeScriptToLua/TypeScriptToLua