Introduction to Luau

The Luau language is a fast, procedural programming language adapted from Lua. Lua was originally created in 1993 due to software trade barriers in Brazil, which prevented many from buying specialized software from outside the country. Because of this, the language was designed to be highly customizable and C-based so that programmers could easily make changes to fit their needs. When Roblox began, they used Lua 5.1 but as the platform has expanded, they’ve made enough additions and changes to warrant their own scripting language, Luau. It should be noted that all Lua 5.1 code is valid in Luau, as it is a subset of the current language. That is to say, syntactically, everything is the same but new features have been added.

The goal of this chapter is to give you the knowledge you need to make your first programs in Luau so that you’re ready to become a fully proficient programmer. No prior programming experience is assumed, so we will start by...