Fengari – Lua for the Browser

It has all the power of something like Python, but is much faster and with far less cruft and basically no confusing elements.

You’re given a small set of tools and it’s incredibly easy to build off them.

I wonder the same thing. Writing a scripting language on top of another scripting language makes me wonder, why add another layer? A common complaint I have seen with frontend JS apps is that people tend to unnecessarily bloat them.

But I do appreciate the efforts and idea. Most probably the developers must have thought this through and have definitely kept the performance aspect in mind.

Do tell, what's your definition of a "scripting language" anyway, and what is it about that definition that implies you shouldn't be happy about implementing one scripting language in another scripting language?

Especially when the hosted scripting language can take advantage of the garbage collection and the incredible amount of optimizations that have been put into the hosting scripting language.

You know there's a reason people have put so much time and effort into optimizing JavaScript. Is there a reason it's sad to take advantage of that?

Or would it make you happier if everyone wrote their own garbage collectors and optimizing JIT compilers and portable operating system independent runtimes from scratch every time?

I wish Netscape had chosen Lua instead of bothering to invent JavaScript. Python would have also been much better than JavaScript, but Lua would have been perfect. But at least they didn't choose TCL, as Sun was pushing before they switched gears to Java after the Great TCL War. And personally, I would have preferred PostScript (which was the basis of NeWS, with a Smalltalk-like OOP system) or ScriptX (which was like Scheme or Dylan with "normal" infix syntax and a CLOS-like OOP system) to JavaScript.

If all the time and effort and treasure that was wasted cobbling together JavaScript from scratch with all its naive unforced design flaws and security holes and interoperability issues -- and then everyone else pissing away so much effort working around and fixing subtle bugs in JavaScript code due to those terrible design flaws (cough cough "this" cough cough "equality") -- had been put into Lua instead, which was cleanly designed from the start by incredibly smart people who actually had a clue about what they were doing, the world would be a much better place.

People who are that confused about equality shouldn't design programming languages:

https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." -George Orwell, Animal Farm

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29379272

>For Netscape in 1995, I believe Python would have been a better choice than JavaScript, but Lua would have been an even better choice, given how much smaller, simpler, and more efficient Lua is, and the eventual excellence of LuaJIT. (If only Lua indexed its array from 0 instead of 1...) But Python and Lua didn't "look like Java" enough for Netscape.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061967

[...]

>But if not PostScript, Python, or Lua, then at least Netscape didn't use TCL in the browser. Around 1994, long after NeWS and right before Java, Sun announced they were going to make TCL the official scripting language of the world wide web, which triggered RMS into kicking off the Great TCL War:

>RMS's "Why you should not use Tcl" flame:

https://wiki.tcl.tk/16730

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061858

>And with that diplomatically worded message, RMS kicked of The Infamous TCL War. That was Stallman's response to Sun bombastically pushing TCL as the official scripting language of the web, BEFORE Live Oak / Java was a widely known (or evangelized) thing.

>At the point anybody started talking about a Java/TCL bridge, it was already all over for TCL becoming the "ubiquitous scripting language of the Internet".

>Sun's unilateral anointment of TCL as the official Internet scripting language trigged RMS's "Why you should not use Tcl" message, which triggered the TCL War, which triggered Sun to switch to Java.

>After the TCL war finally subsided, Sun quietly pushed TCL aside and loudly evangelize Java instead. The TCL community was quite flustered and disappointed after first winning the title "ubiquitous scripting language of the Internet" and then having the title yanked away and given to Java.

>Any talk of bridges were just table scraps for TCL, the redheaded bastard stepchild sitting outside on the back porch in the rain, smoking a cigarette and commiserating with NeWS and Self.

>Tom Lord's description of what happened is insightful and accurate:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110102015130/http://basiscraft...