[koeng]

Eh, I think I disagree with this. The point is that I can make very complicated libraries in Teal, and those compile down and are usable in lua scripts. This is where I actually used it - very simple scripts, very large and complicated library imported into those scripts. If you really need to prototype, just use lua, not teal. I've never found prototyping in teal to be a problem though.

On the other hand, I absolutely despise type annotations as comments. There is something so unclean about that - if I want a readable library, I want there to be type proofing all the way down. No switching between static and dynamic.

[cardanome]

I don't think Teal can be total. Lua is super expressive and you would need to get deep into dependent types and whatnot to caption a fraction of the power of its types.

> Some Lua libraries use complex dynamic types that can't be easily represented in Teal. In those cases, using any and making explicit casts is our last resort.

https://github.com/teal-language/tl/blob/master/docs/tutoria...

Personally if I paid the cost of having an extra compile step then I would rather wish for some serious type safety like what Elm or Reason provide. But then you end up with a different language.

I agree though that for your use case of making complicated libraries Teal might be actually good fit.

I was going to argue that Luau is superior anyway if you really can't cope with annotations but obviously if you want to make libraries for lua users that doesn't work. (Though I guess you could technically compile down from Luau to Lua, just not sure if anyone has ever bothered.)

[koeng]

Teal can't be total. The generics can get real annoying, I noticed. Still, was worthwhile to use for the most part.