Re: luaJIT vs. lua-llvm

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 8:07 AM, Tim Mensch <tim-lua-l@bitgems.com> wrote:
> wouldn't even consider llvm-lua for my own uses. If I needed MORE speed than
> LuaJIT, and for whatever reason I didn't want to just use C++, I'd probably
> switch to a new language -- Google's "Go" [3] feels a bit like Lua to me,
> for instance, and it gets the benefits of predefined types, which can allow
> a static compiler to create well-optimized code.

Go does feel Lua-ish in many ways.  The entertaining thing is everyone
believed your last sentence until the tracing compilers (particularly
LuaJIT) showed that dynamic languages can touch C speed (although not
as reliably) even without the apparently essential benefit of static
typing to assist the compiler.

Static typing has other advantages (thorough compile-time errors[1]
and good IDE support[2]) but speed appears no longer to be one of
them.

steve d.

[1] although we can get quite far - this is why I am (metaphorically)
plunging through the autumn mud towards Moscow with lglob
[2] Koneki LDT shows a lot of promise, but I'm staying out of that
party until their doc format does function name-and-membership
inference. In return, I'll support their format in ldoc ;)