lua nova » coroutines http://www.luanova.org welcome to the moon Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:46:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Lua: how we first met http://www.luanova.org/3/ http://www.luanova.org/3/#comments Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:08:09 +0000 nathany http://luanova.wordpress.com/2007/11/09/3/ moonlove.png This past summer I evaluated both Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom for managing my digital photographs. You see, iPhoto 6 was getting a bit sluggish, Photoshop Elements even more so (not yet having Intel support). To top it off, I was considering a Digital SLR, so I’d need something that could read RAW.

Adobe Lightroom won out for me. It provided enough of the Photoshop functionality (curves, etc.) that I often wouldn’t need to launch Elements. Just as important, the reviews proclaimed Lightroom to be more responsive and less of a resource hog. So what does all this have to do with Lua?

Adobe Lightroom is programmed with C/C++/Objective-C and… 40% Lua. An interpreted scripting language making up 40% of the code, and it feels more responsive and uses less resources?! That deserves a second look…

Adobe Lightroom puts Lua’s coroutines to good use, keeping the user interface responsive while images visually rotate or exports process. Coroutines are a form of “cooperative multitasking,” where the programmer controls task-switching rather then being preempted as with “real” threads.

I’ve taken a great interest in the Lua language. The more I learn, the more intrigued I am. This blog exists in order to share these findings with you. Lua is Portuguese for moon, and “lua nova” means new moon.

Welcome to Lua, welcome to the moon…

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