r/lua

9.1K archived posts · Jan 2009 – Sep 2026

lua

r/lua

News and discussion for the Lua programming language.

Created Jul 1, 2008

24KMembers (last snapshot)

9.1KArchived posts

A subreddit for the Lua programming language. Using edurne for boxes, spoilers, etc.

If you actively contribute to a Lua project, PM us with a link and we'll give you flair.

“The key benefits unique to Lua are the fact that it is amazingly small, fast, and on a technical level a masterpiece.”

“Before you create yet another configuration file or resource format (and yet another parser to accompany it), try Lua.”

“If you are ever tempted to put scripting into a program, run don't walk to www.lua.org and use it.”

lua mailing list (web interface)
#lua on freenode, the primary Lua IRC channel
lua wiki, for all sorts of information about lua, it's sort of disorganized at the moment, so go fix it!
about lua, what Lua is, why to use it, and what it's good for (sells itself short, methinks)

Lua tutorial via wiki
Lua in eight pages or less: this is for v5.1 and might need an update. We'll give contributors flair and internet points.
Lua's reference manual, extensive documentation of every version of the language.

LuaRocks, lua's package manager and repository
the LuaRocks mailing list
ZeroBrane studio, lua's most notable IDE.
Shiny profiler, a lightweight profiler for C, C++, and Lua.
LuaJIT and its C FFI, the infamous lua trace compiler: Mike Pall's [successful] attempt to prove that dynamic languages can be fast.
Lua.vm.js and moonshine, Lua on top of JavaScript: lua.vm.js uses emscripten, whereas moonshine is in "normal" JavaScript.
UniLua, Lua implementation in C#, intended for compatibility with Unity3D
MoonScript A rich programming language the compiles to Lua.

r/gamedevclassifieds for game developers, r/forhire for job offers, r/jobbit for general employment advice/links
Lua on StackOverflow Careers

OpenResty and Lapis, Lua application server on nginx and Lua web framework on openresty
concurrency: Luaproc for fibers and Lua Lanes for green threads
Typed Lua, a modern static type analyzer for Lua (work in progress, but I think it's cool)
LPeg, Lua's powerful, expressive, fast and simple parser generator.
Qt Lua, Lua GUIs in Qt
GSL-shell, Lua interface to GNU Scientific Library, with quick-start numerical programming via REPL.

Long list of popular Lua game development toolkits: Lua is very popular for game development, so we can't list them all; only major, free/open-source projects are listed below.
LÖVE (subreddit) - lightweight Lua cross-platform 2D game toolkit
Defold - game engine with Lua API
Solar2D - formerly Corona SDK
Cocos2d-x - free mobile/cross-platform game engine and application framework with Lua support

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