4 ms·

Is Lua fast? I heard it has double as its only numeric data dype. How can that ever be fast? Here, look at the benchmarks: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp

• davidw 18y ago
  For a "scripting language", yes. Compared to C, no.
  • stcredzero 18y ago
    If you're going to be crunching petabytes of 32 bit floats, then by all means, use C or even FORTRAN. Most of us don't have a requirements that stringent, and something like Lua is just fine. Unfortunately, a lot of us are brainwashed into thinking we've got to act like weather simulation programmers, when we're really doing business apps.
    • davidw 18y ago
      I wasn't making any value judgments about languages and speed, only stating the obvious that Lua is very fast as an interpreted language, but not so fast compared to fast compiled languages.