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docs: Adds a paragraph about lua being a real programming language. #1446

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Weyaaron
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@Weyaaron Weyaaron commented Apr 6, 2025

As proposed in #1376, I have written something up. I am open to discussion about it!

@feoh
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feoh commented Apr 9, 2025

I like the idea of this but I think the text needs a bit of work.

There are some plurals where they should be singular etc.

Also, will this inspire or merely confuse new Neovim users?

Anyway thank you for your contribution!

@feoh
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feoh commented Apr 9, 2025

If you accept my changes or suggest alternatives I'll merge this. Thanks for the contribution!

Weyaaron and others added 6 commits April 10, 2025 08:43
Co-authored-by: Chris Patti <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Chris Patti <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Chris Patti <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Chris Patti <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Chris Patti <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Chris Patti <[email protected]>
@Weyaaron
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I appreciate the effort, thanks for providing the feedback. You should probably rebase the branch to get rid of all the additional commits. If you do not do this I'll gladly do it.

@Weyaaron
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After the rebase it can be merged 👍

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Honestly I find it confusing. I'm not quite sure what the purpose of including this text here is.

If I want to learn what Lua is, I'd search for it and I have the following search result on the top:

The Programming Language Lua

Additionally, after going through the examples, I believe the kickstart codebase is full of similar snippets.

Wouldn’t this be considered unnecessary noise in the documentation?

-- simply delete this code and you are done. If you like it, you
-- may expand to what you need and nothing else. And if this is to
-- much work, you might end up using the plugin anyway, but based
-- on valid effidence that you like this feature.
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effidence

is this a normative word? As a non-native speaker, I suspect it's not a standard English word.

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Excactly, you spotted a typo. I should have been more thorough on these.

@Weyaaron
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Honestly I find it confusing. I'm not quite sure what the purpose of including this text here is.

If I want to learn what Lua is, I'd search for it and I have the following search result on the top:

The Programming Language Lua

Additionally, after going through the examples, I believe the kickstart codebase is full of similar snippets.

Wouldn’t this be considered unnecessary noise in the documentation?

It is not so much about what lua is, but rather about communication that you can use lua with its full power. This is "somewhat obvious", but I feel like it is not written down sufficiently. Especially considering the script uses some of these powers later on. And I feel like providing this context will ease understanding later on.

@feoh
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feoh commented Apr 11, 2025

@ro0gr Is there a change we could make that would make this more concise or impactful or do you think the whole idea needs to be rejected?

Thanks for participating everyone. I have no skin in this game, I already know Lua and am not a newbie so all opinions are helpful :)

@ro0gr
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ro0gr commented Apr 11, 2025

@feoh That's a great question.

My main concern with this PR is the inclusion of random code snippets, which, on their own, aren't sufficient for a curious user to find the right answers. As I mentioned earlier, I believe the Kickstart project already provides a solid set of working examples for newcomers to explore.

Additionally, we're not leaving users alone with just raw Lua - we already offer some starting points, for example:

kickstart.nvim/init.lua

Lines 35 to 42 in d350db2

If you don't know anything about Lua, I recommend taking some time to read through
a guide. One possible example which will only take 10-15 minutes:
- https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/lua/
After understanding a bit more about Lua, you can use `:help lua-guide` as a
reference for how Neovim integrates Lua.
- :help lua-guide
- (or HTML version): https://neovim.io/doc/user/lua-guide.html

In my view, the best approach is to outsource deeper learning to external resources, rather than trying to inline educational content directly into comments. Unfortunately, I don't have a good list of links off the top of my head, maybe someone does?

However, I find the r/neovim community very helpful for this purpose. It might make sense to at least share a link to this and similar resources.

@danarnold
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There's also already a reference to Lua being a real programming language:

kickstart.nvim/init.lua

Lines 520 to 521 in d350db2

-- NOTE: Remember that Lua is a real programming language, and as such it is possible
-- to define small helper and utility functions so you don't have to repeat yourself.

@feoh
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feoh commented Apr 11, 2025

@Weyaaron What do you think of the already existing references others have pointed out?

@dam9000
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dam9000 commented Apr 11, 2025

In my view this PR is superfluous. There's already enough helpful hints throughout the whole kickstart. People that will be interested in learning more about lua will be able to find numerous examples and documentation about it, no need to fit everything in kickstart, this can be a never ending story, there's always more that can be added.

@Weyaaron
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@Weyaaron What do you think of the already existing references others have pointed out?

Sorry for the late reply, I appreciate the feedback/dialog. Given that multiple people have voiced concern I concede my point and retract the pr.

@Weyaaron Weyaaron closed this Apr 13, 2025
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5 participants