Potion - a little fast OO language by _why
Not to sidetrack things, but there is a bunch of cool stuff in the source for Lua. Whether or not it gets used directly, it is going to have a <i>huge</i> influence on the implementation of new languages.<p>It has a bunch of novel ideas* (e.g. the register-based VM, the table optimizations) that have paid off big, it's very portable (due to being written in strict ANSI C), and it has a surprisingly small code base. It's pretty readable (<a href="http://www.lua.org/source/5.1/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lua.org/source/5.1/</a>), full of examples of simple-but-efficient garbage collectors, string handling optimizations, etc. The designers have worked hard to keep it small and simple.<p>* See "The Implementation of Lua 5.0" (<a href="http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~lhf/ftp/doc/jucs05.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~lhf/ftp/doc/jucs05.pdf</a>). It's 16 pages, and is a quick - but quite thought-provoking - read.