hengestone

lua-languages

Web Development2020–2025

hengestone / lua-languages

lua-languages

Languages that compile to Lua

Web Development Languages & Compilers

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Languages that compile to Lua

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Also in these discussions

rochus-keller/oberon · linked in 4 of the same discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:24:10 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year20 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2020-02-01 17:22:16 UTC to 2025-10-02 19:36:19 UTC.

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Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	8	0	8
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	0	3
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	0	3
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	1	2
2024	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1
2025	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2

What Hacker News says

20 sources

pmarreck·Oct 2, 2025

There are languages that compile to Lua. Have you investigated those? For example, you can use a TypeScript syntax and pick up free typechecking along the way: https://typescripttolua.github.io/ There's also the venerable MoonScript: https://moonscript.org/ And YueScript, a personal fave: https://yuescript.org/doc/ A whole list: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In Why I chose Lua for this blog

Rochus·May 16, 2025

> LuaJITted Lua code runs at 80% (on average, sometimes faster!) of the compiled C version of the same algorithm, typically Cannot confirm this. It might be true on selected micro benchmarks. Here are the results of the Are-we-fast-yet benchmark suite, which includes a decent set of benchmarks challenging CPU, cache and memory access: https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon/blob/master/testcase.... On average, the C and C++ implementations are five times faster than LuaJIT. > There are also some neat languages that compile to (transpile to?) Lua Here is a comprehensive list: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages. Lanuages like Oberon or Luon directly compile to LuaJIT bytecode (i.e. not to Lua).

In Teal – A statically-typed dialect of Lua

cies·Jul 8, 2024

> Also, I’m not aware of any static typing add-ons for Lua I'd not cal TypeScript an addon to JS. It's a language that transpiles to JS (and so does CoffeScript, Elm, etc. etc.) There are many language projects that transpile to Lua: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages?tab=readme-ov-fi...

In QuickJS, the Next Generation: a mighty JavaScript engine

cab404·Nov 13, 2023Submission

List of languages that compile to Lua

4 points · Open discussion

Rochus·Sep 13, 2023

There are quite many languages compiling to Lua (or LuaJIT). Fennel is just one of them. See e.g. https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages.

In Why Fennel?

gsuuon·Sep 13, 2023

This post inspired me to look for an ML-like language that compiles to lua and I found this useful list: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In Why Fennel?

gyulai·Nov 13, 2022

I feel the need to ramble slightly OT on how great Lua is: I was looking for an architecture/tech stack recently that would allow me to develop a cross-platform desktop GUI. I went on a several-weeks-long fact finding mission (the longest of its kind I've ever done in my 10 years as a professional software developer). The option that won was to write all business logic (a few thousand lines of code) in Lua, then write the GUI in each platform's native language+ui-library combination and re-use the same business logic by embedding Lua. Another option that made the shortlist was using Haxe instead of Lua, but after several weeks of active Haxe development, it became clear that that was a bad idea, and with Lua, the developer experience is now so much better. I definitely plan on continuing to use Lua as my main programming language. This

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comes after 20 years of having python as my main programming language because I'm displeased with feature creep and bloat on python. With lua, I find that I barely miss any features/abilities from the vastly more complex python while the simplicity of lua means my code gets to "go places" where python can't go. With lua, you find casual implementers making fully compatible alternative implementations (e.g. NeoLua for C#, Luna for Java, fengari for JavaScript, ...) With Python, alternative implementations seemingly just can't keep up with the pace at which CPython is introducing unnecessary new features and CPython-compatbility is de-facto the only meaningful python standard there is. Jython and IronPython would make the platform so much more appealing, but they appear dead in the water. Python implementations for the browser pop up every couple of years only to see little adoption and quietly disappear again. What's more: Once you've settled on Lua as an embedding language, developers of Lua logic are free to use not just Lua, but they can pick from a host of cool transpile-to-Lua languages [1]. [1] https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In #lang Lua

nmz·Jul 19, 2022

Python is familiar because you already know it. Lua is much easier to learn than python. Also, you can look for a python transpiler to lua, or any that you like. Take your pick. https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In Mpv – A free, open source, and cross-platform media player

xigoi·Apr 12, 2022

Take your pick: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In Chumsky: A Tutorial

japhib·Nov 3, 2021

Doubtful, but there is TypescriptToLua: https://typescripttolua.github.io/ Here's a whole list of languages that compile to Lua (many of them statically typed): https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In Luau goes open-source

edrx·Oct 11, 2021

There's a list of languages that compile to Lua here: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In Python and Lua (2019)

ibraheemdev·Jul 2, 2021

One little-talked about advantage of Lua support is that you can now write your vim config/scripts in one of the various Lua transpilers like moonscript [0], or maybe even typescript [1]! [0]: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript [1]: https://github.com/TypeScriptToLua/TypeScriptToLua [2]: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In Neovim v0.5

Rochus·Sep 6, 2020

Plenty of lisp frontends for lua, see https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages#lisp

In Fennel – Lisp in Lua

toastal·Aug 17, 2020

Lua versioning is a really weird thing I'll give you that. I find class-based OOP a point against a language rather than for it, but there's already a huge chunk of languages that compile to/add types to Lua (https://github.com/hengestone/Lua-languages), with Wu and Amulet looking intriguing to me.

In MicroPython

Rochus·Aug 5, 2020

Good idea. But then why not use one of the already available statically/strictly typed languages which compile to Lua or LuaJIT bytecode? See https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages

In Luau – A fast, small, safe, gradually typed scripting language derived from Lua

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