Published on March 25th, 2020 | by Kristy Hill

Should You Choose Lua or Bash For Your Next App Development Project in 2020?

Technologies are indeed evolving with each passing year and empowering the developer’s community with more powerful yet feature-rich frameworks and programming languages to develop modern applications to quench the needs of today successfully. However, there are few frameworks and programming languages that have set a strong foothold in the industry and seem like they will never go out of fashion in the coming future as well.

Whether you are a beginner stepping towards learning the primary programming languages or an entrepreneur looking to develop an application with the best programming language, Lua and Bash are the two leading titans of the community that you need to know.

You must be wondering that in the age of Python, JavaScript, C, SQL, why are we asking you to choose between Lua and Bash?

Well, according to the Slant Community, Lua is the most popular yet best programming language to learn first over Bash. Besides, Lua is ranked at 5th position in popularity, leaving Bash at 48th position.

Now the question comes to our mind is, why Lua is the first choice of programming language for software developers in Dubai?

Dive Insight!

Before understanding the pros and cons of each programming language to decide why Lua is popular over Bash, take a moment to learn the baseline of each language.

Understanding the Overview of Lua and Bash

In a nutshell: While both are programming languages but used at different levels. Lua is a powerful, lightweight yet efficient and embeddable programming language whereas Bash (Bourne Again Shell) is a command processor that used to read and run a series of commands from a file.

Lua is one of the feature-rich languages that is embedded with C API. Developers with the knowledge of C language can quickly learn it by directly integrating the C library with LUA; developers can quickly get a Lua script running on the C side.

While Lua is dynamically typed, runs by interpreting bytecode with register-based virtual machines. Therefore they are broadly used to develop many industrial applications including World of Warcraft, Ginga and many more. However, Lua is a popular language in developing game apps.

On the other hand, Bash is a shell and command language interpreter for the GNU operating system. Bash is considered as the advanced version of the Bourne Shell and majorly used to execute commands from a file.

Let’s go beyond this overview and understand the pros and cons of Lua and Bash to decide which is the best programing language to adopt in 2020…

Advantages and Limitations of Using LUA in 2020

Pros of Using LUA

Easy To Integrate With C Library

One of the best things about using LUA is that they are well designed with C API and easy to integrate with C library. Once Lua is integrated with the C library, you will quickly get the LUA script ready to run on the C side.

Quick To Implement

As compared to other languages, Lua is quite fast to write and implement, no matter how complex your app structure is. As developers can implement critical parts in C language, so the performance can be improved by ten times.

Easy To Learn

Whether you are a novice or a skilled developer, learning this language is far more straightforward if you have a C library. Lua works wonderfully with C and makes it easier for the developers to rewrite the codes.

Large Community Support

A Lua is a highly popular programming language and holding 5th position in popularity; therefore, it has a large and supportive community that will assist and guide you all the time. The community consists of highly skilled and experienced developers that allow beginners to gain knowledge at various stages of app development.

Lua Is Free To Use Programming Language

Lua is an open-source programming language that can be used to develop any commercial level application without even paying any MIT license fee. All you need to do is to download it and use it for free of cost.

Cons of Using Lua

Easy To Make Coding Mistake

As it is not a mainstream programming language; therefore, developers may need to write some code manually. When writing a function manually, there is a proper scope that it fails to run later due to coding bugs.

Advantages and Limitations of Bash Programing Language

Pros of Using Bash

Offer You Extensive Set Of Features

Bash is a high level of programming language and seamlessly used to run multiple commands from a file, therefore, by default it offers you built-in features. With the help of those features, even the complex and complicated programs can be managed without any hassle. Moreover, in comparison to other languages, you can do the same task in less time frame and with fewer coding.

Easy To Learn

Compared to Lua, Bash is far easier to learn without even having any knowledge of mainstream programming language. Bash scripting is an extensive, rich and robust language. Therefore, beginners can also access it with little support and help from the community.

Various Tutorials Available for Beginners

Bash is a very mature shell, so there are a lot of great examples and resources available for beginners to describe how to access this language for certain levels of applications.

Cons of Using Bash

Incredibly Complicated Rules to Follow

Since Bash has several layers of interpretation with different rule sets, so for any beginners find it complicated. It has 5 ways of quoting, which include 2 quoting phases, 2-word splitting phases and a tokenization phase. At the initial level, it is complex to learn and understand for the beginners.

Do you think that only knowing pros and cons of each programming language will help you select the right programming language for your next app development project in 2020?

No you need to get the answer of a few questions before you select the programming language.

Factors to Consider When Selecting the Right Programming Language For Your Next Project in 2020

Well, every project is unique and has different requirements; therefore there is no standard list to follow. But still, there are such common yet important factors serving as a guide to choose a programming language that you’ll need.

Here are the few points that you should consider:

Decide whether you want the programming language to develop- web, mobile or cross-platform application?
Are there specific libraries, features and tools that you are looking for in programming language to meet the industry standard of the project?
Are there any constraints of your project related to budget, time and resources?
Determine whether the language survives for the long haul and has a proper ecosystem? Make sure the language you select either Lua or Bash, has a strong history and possibility to survive in future.
Does the programming language need to integrate with the third-party tools or library?

Ending Note

Hopefully, you enjoyed reading this blog and able to understand the difference between Lua and Bash and for what purposes they are being used.

The basic idea behind this comparison is to guide you with all the benefits and limitations associated with each programming language and help you make the right choice between these languages.

In case you have any confusion, I would recommend you to hire a software developer in Dubai to get an expert solution for your next app development project.

Tags: 2020, app development, bash, lua, next, project

About the Author

Kristy Hill Kristy is associated with the leading software companies in Dubai for 12+ years and working as a software developer in Dubai. Being into the industry for 12 years and having a flaw of writing, she advocates beginners and businesses about the latest software development technologies, programming language and so on to help them stand apart in the industry.