Re: Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, C, C++, Lua, tcl, javascript and Java comparison

[Justin Cormack <justin@...>]

On 17 Jul 2013 17:33, "Tim Mensch" <tim-lua-l@bitgems.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/17/2013 8:25 AM, Steve Litt wrote:
> > So true Tim. And besides that, if you're not doing a random number
> > generator or a hugely graphics heavy program, is runtime speed
> > really that important?
>
> I do games. I have to do ALL of my upkeep, graphics set-up, AI calculations, etc., in 16.66ms or less, or it's going to skip a frame.
>
> Yes, speed is still important. ;P
>
> The rest of your points are good, of course, which is why I'm using LuaJIT instead of writing most of the code in C++.
>
> The only way things would be better for me (and games in general) is if LuaJIT had an optional reference-counted garbage collector. It seems that Lua CAN be modified to use one (see LuaPlus [1]), and the slight decrease in amortized performance would be more than offset (for needs of games) by the decreased memory required compared to mark-and-sweep and the increase in predictability of execution times.

You can reference count LuaJIT ffi objects yourself if you want to/need to.

> Tim
>
> [1] http://luaplus.org/#What-is-LuaPlus -- tl;dr: "An optional high performance reference counted garbage collector."