In a move that has delighted retro computer enthusiasts and programmers alike, Art Green has announced the successful port of LUA to the Apple IIgs platform. Green, a software developer based in Chicago and active member of the Apple II community, has brought an initial version of the powerful programming language, LUA, to the platform, providing a new level of flexibility and potential to users.
Lua is an embeddable scripting language that supports various programming paradigms including procedural, object-oriented, functional, data-driven programming, and data description. With a simple syntax and powerful data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible semantics, Lua is dynamically typed, runs through interpreting bytecode with a register-based virtual machine, and features automatic memory management with incremental garbage collection. As a result, Lua is ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping. With the successful port to the Apple IIgs, users can soon leverage the full power of LUA to create their applications, and utilities.
The port of LUA to the Apple IIgs is a significant achievement, and it opens up new possibilities for the community. The Apple IIgs is an versatile 16-bit machine with a bevy of new hardware and is still used by many retro computing enthusiasts around the globe. The addition of a modern programming language like LUA will make it even more valuable.
Green’s successful port of LUA is a significant contribution to the Apple II community, and his dedication to the platform is evident in his participation in various related projects. The port of LUA includes a number of the features of the original LUA programming language with additional optimizations and improvements for the Apple IIgs platform. He notes on the Github page that currently there is just enough in the port to get it running.
Downloads
The initial version of LUA for the Apple IIgs, version 0.0.1 is available, along with the source code from Art Green’s Github page at:
https://github.com/artgreen/lua-iigs
