Most of the 'hate' has to do with the fact that the language isn't suited to platforms with memory constraints. Specifically there's semantics around closure ca

Most of the 'hate' has to do with the fact that the language isn't suited to platforms with memory constraints. Specifically there's semantics around closure capture that make it pretty easy to leak variables. I've worked on platforms where we wrote the same logical code in JS and Lua, closures and all. The JS version leaked like a sieve while the Lua version was memory steady. You can totally use gc'd, interpreted languages in the embedded space. I've used Lua on a product with 8mb of system ram in a 400kb block and it worked like a charm.