Re: [Gsl-shell-info] Introduction

[Francesco Abbate]

2014-09-08 23:15 GMT+02:00 Dibyendu Majumdar <address@hidden>:
> I am working on making Lua more friendly towards Financial Quantitative
> development, and having GSL Shell is a great benefit. I looked at a variety
> of languages before deciding on Lua - R, Javascript (V8), Python, Julia,
> Pure, various derivatives of Lua, Angelscript, etc. Ultimately I settled on
> Lua as I believe it has the right features for people who are not
> professional programmers but for whom programming is a necessity
> nevertheless.

Hi,

I'm glad you are finding GSL Shell useful. I think Lua is a very good
programming language in its class and this is probably one of the main
advantages of GSL Shell. Before I was using GNU R and I still use it
sometimes but I found the R language unsuitable to write even
moderately complex functions and ultimately frustrating.

I came to the conclusions that the design of a good programming
language is not an easy task and when an application "invent" its own
language often the results are disappointing. By using Lua GSL Shell
relies on a well thought and sound programming language and in my
point of view this is a very important advantage.

> I was pleased to discover that I can load my own module (written in C, C++)
> in GSL Shell and combine this with existing functionality. I used standard
> Lua C API to ensure portability between Lua and Luajit.

Well, another advantage of Lua and one of the key of its success ;)

Best regards
Francesco