Re: Terra - A low-level counterpart to Lua

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 7:11 PM, Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@trms.com> wrote:
> This looks cool, as does Julio (http://julialang.org). I like the idea of a
> successor to C that isn't C++. Conceptually, something that is in the spirit
> of C but that borrows more from Lua / Scheme...

Yes, to a first approximation they're Lua with static type annotations
with a LLVM backend.  Julia is making a serious effort at being a
next-generation scientific computing language.

I notice that in addition to LLVM Terra requires LuaJIT.

LuaJIT already offers raw performance, since its FFI is very efficient
at interfacing with C libraries. The catch is that you have to do the
mental switch between Lua and C universes; as someone commented on the
LuaJIT list: using LuaJIT FFI without understanding C semantics is
like playing with a loaded shotgun.