Designing a Programming Language For Embeddability 52
CowboyRobot writes "The creators of the Lua language describe the process of designing a new language and the constraints that certain parameters, specifically embeddability, place on the process. 'Many languages (not necessarily scripting languages) support extending through an FFI (foreign function interface). An FFI is not enough to allow a function in the system language to do all that a function in the script can do. Nevertheless, in practice FFI covers most common needs for extending, such as access to external libraries and system calls. Embedding, on the other hand, is harder to support, because it usually demands closer integration between the host program and the script, and an FFI alone does not suffice.'"
If they are going to, might as well do it right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Since it's a given that people are going to be creating new languages, I certainly hope they listen to what Roberto has to say. Lua is a joy to embed into applications compared to python and others.