You might want to look at Lua. It's significantly faster than Python (particularly with the LuaJIT compiler! (http://luajit.org/luajit_performance.html http://l

You might want to look at Lua. It's significantly faster than Python (particularly with the LuaJIT compiler! (http://luajit.org/luajit_performance.html http://luajit.org/luajit_performance.html), can also be used as a prototype-based language* , and easy embedding was its primary design constraint. It also has tail-call elimination, coroutines, closures, and so on; semantically, it's very much like Scheme with a vaguely Python-like syntax. * The language design favors hooks (called "metatables") for adding features to the core over adding features directly, to keep it small and flexible. You can build a prototype or class-based OO system in less than a page of relatively simple code. (See _Programming in Lua_, ch. 16: http://www.lua.org/pil/16.html http://www.lua.org/pil/16.html ) Or delay/force, map/fold/filter, etc. It's also written in pure ANSI C, which means porting it is trivial.