4 ms·

> You need a language that is small yet still complete. Even today, the only languages that really fit that bill are Scheme/Lisp, Tcl, and Forth. Lua? It's us

> You need a language that is small yet still complete. Even today, the only languages that really fit that bill are Scheme/Lisp, Tcl, and Forth. Lua? It's used in (and used for?) a lot of embedding: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lua_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lua_(programming_language)

bsder 2y ago
Tcl was 1988. Lua was 1993. Lua is quite a bit larger than Tcl. In addition, no two Lua installations can ever agree on which modules they require (which makes the actual Lua binary even bigger).
- fullstop 2y ago
  Larger? On my system libtcl8.6.so is 1.7 megabytes and liblua5.1.so is 192 kilobytes. It's not even close. Lua uses libraries / modules based on where you tell the interpreter they are located, so that's on you. Set package.path and package.cpath correctly.
  - bsder 2y ago
    You are comparing 2024 versions. Go find the original tarball versions from 1990 (maybe you have to go to Usenet sources!). Tcl was small.
    - fullstop 2y ago
      Ah, you used "is" and not "was" in your original post. I wonder if TCL 2.1 will compile with modern gcc?
      - bsder 2y ago
        That would probably be painful. It's old-style C. Better to start with Jim Tcl or Picol. Even something like Tiny Tcl would be a better start (I think it fit in 64K).