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Maybe because the VM needs to run on rather limited hardware, not capable of running any of those "real" languages -- that might be the reasoning behind it. On
by mike_ivanov 6y ago
Maybe because the VM needs to run on rather limited hardware, not capable of running any of those "real" languages -- that might be the reasoning behind it. On the other hand, ESP32 and similar boards can run not only Lua and JavaScript, but even ClojureScript, so it depends on where you draw the line.
- monocasa 6y agoYou can run those language on very small devices. MicroPython works great on the micro:bit for instance, which only has 16k of RAM. An Arduino might be pushing it though with 2k of RAM. Lisp was originally run on a system that had 4K 36bit words of memory for RAM, but no ROM (the IBM 704). There's a pretty long history of virtual machines on small memory systems, going back to the days of BASIC and SWEET16. They can actually make better use of memory in some cases, with the VM byte code sort of being a compression technique versus native code. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWEET16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWEET16
- pjmlp 6y agoIt should be noted for younger generations that ESP32 is more powerful than typical 16 bit computers we used for MS-DOS.