Re: Metaprogramming

[Tim Hill <drtimhill@...>]

> 
>> — Compact: The footprint is important to us for low power and
>> operation on a wide range of devices: embedded to server 
> 
>> — Stable:
>> The release cycle seems sensible, with carefully thought out releases
>> with significant improvements 
> 
>> — Rational C API: Ever looked at the
>> Python one?
> 
> 
> Most people don't need compact.
> 
> But if you need to interface with C, going both ways, Lua's absolutely
> the way to go.
> 
> 
> SteveT
> 

I think compact is under-rated. Compact almost always equates to efficient, which maps to “low power” .. which *is* important in the modern world of portable devices. People either forget or do not realize the enormous power costs of CPU cache misses (and, worse, page swaps). The tight core of the Lua VM means that it is virtually running from the L1 cache on many modern processors (even ARM cores), which translates into very significant power reduction (and of course also improves performance).

—TIm