Grokking the Virtual Machine

["Hypertext Matters" <htmatters@...>]

I am the new Javascript columnist for hotscripts.com's email newsletter, 
with a monthly circulation of 2/3 million. I am using my second month's 
article for a little Lua evangelism. The following is my proposed article 
which I have to submit in the next couple of days; it must be 100-150 words 
and I'm near the very top already, so there won't be much I can add, though 
I could change things depending on feedback.

Thanks in advance, article follows:
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GROKKING THE VIRTUAL MACHINE: This month we consider not Javascript, but 
it's syntactic cousin, Lua:

a = {}
a["b"] = "c"

This code is valid in both Lua and Javascript; the first line creates a 
Javascript "associative array", or in Lua, a "table". In both languages 
these constructs serve as "objects", so both of the following are valid 
statements for retrieving the "b" property of "a":

a["b"]
a.b

Other similarities include that functions are first-class values in both 
languages: they can be stored in variables, passed as arguments, and 
returned as results. Furthermore, both languages support "lexical closures", 
which allow "data hiding" (see last month's column).

Lua may well be the lowest-level of the C-based scripting languages: it is a 
"register-based" virtual machine, and has some hooks directly into C. It is 
popular both in Brazil where it originated, and with game programmers. Look 
into Lua, and become a better Javascript programmer!

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