Embedded Languages: Why Lua?

What the talk is about

Alyona Ponomarenko explains why she picks Lua for embedding into a game engine. She first lists the requirements for an ideal scripting language: dynamic, popular, with a gentle learning curve yet powerful enough for professionals, fast, rich in libraries and easy to embed. She then compares the candidates: Python is not truly embeddable, JavaScript interpreters are large, ActionScript is dead, Haxe is a transcompiler, Angel Script and Squirrel are little used, and a homegrown language will almost surely lose to existing ones. Lua was designed for embedding, is fast enough, and testers need only a short course to start writing scripts. She answers common objections (built for C rather than C++, slowness, unsuitable for large systems) and shows the team's debugging tools. Useful for programmers choosing a scripting language for an engine.