Ierusalimschy

Ierusalimschy refers to Roberto Ierusalimschy, a Brazilian computer scientist and professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) in Porto Alegre. He is best known as one of the principal creators of the Lua programming language, developed in the 1990s by the TeCG group at PUCRS. Along with colleagues Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo and Waldemar Celes, Ierusalimschy contributed to Lua’s design, implementation, and documentation. Lua was conceived as a lightweight, embeddable scripting language intended to extend applications with user scripting and to be easy to learn for both developers and end users.

As a co-author of Lua’s reference manuals and related materials, Ierusalimschy helped shape the language’s philosophy of simplicity, portability, and small footprint. He is also a co-author of the book Programming in Lua, which explains Lua’s concepts and usage and has been published in multiple editions and languages. In academia, he has conducted research in programming languages, language design, and software engineering, and he has taught courses at PUCRS. He has participated in the Lua community through conferences and collaborations that promote Lua’s adoption in education, multimedia, and game development. Through his teaching and research, Ierusalimschy has contributed to the broader ecosystem surrounding Lua, influencing both its ongoing development and its applications in various domains.