[robmccoll]

If you are considering using this, please consider using Lua instead. Lua has decent performance on its own, great performance for a scripting language when using LuaJIT, plays well with others, is insanely embeddable, and is much easier to learn and work with. No language is perfect, but Javascript is a bit mediocre.

[Aldo_MX]

You are making assumptions about the needs of a project to endorse your favorite language.

Remember that languages are tools, not sport teams.

There are needs that completely disregard any of the benefits you mentioned with lua, for example:

  a) How can Lua help me run existing JavaScript code?

  b) Why is Lua more cost-effective than embeddable JavaScript interpreters considering the
     following:
     1. the cost of learning how to embed and work with the Lua interpreter
     2. the cost of learning the scripting language with all its implications: a different
        syntax, a different way to work enforced by its standard library (ex. 1-indexed
        arrays), new quirks (ex. commenting nested arrays), etc.
     3. the cost of training people from other areas which are already accustomed to
        JavaScript

[justincormack]

(a) Tessel produced a pretty complete open source JS to Lua converter, which runs node[1]

(b) People are not dumb, they can learn Lua. It is easier than learning JavaScript.

[1] https://github.com/tessel/colony-compiler

[Aldo_MX]

> (b) People are not dumb, they can learn Lua. It is easier than learning JavaScript.

I was not saying that people is dumb, I was saying that learning it requires extra time and effort, and that increases the cost of a project.

[j_s]

Tessel also implemented a JS runtime incorporating LuaJIT, though they since chosen V8.

https://github.com/tessel/runtime

https://tessel.io/blog/102381339917/a-new-engine-for-your-te...

[amelius]

Also, how can we run Lua in the browser? And how does it compare to "native" javascript in terms of performance?