C# vs. Forth vs. JavaScript vs. Lua Comparison Chart

Forth, the computer language was created for programming embedded and real-time applications. Today, it is available for developing applications on Windows, DOS, and variants of Unix that include macOS. Additionally, commercial-grade Forth cross-compilers generate highly optimized code that runs on a variety of microprocessors and microcontrollers and proves themselves very capable in custom-hardware environments. Forth is a high-level programming language, although most versions include an assembler. Fourth-system providers often include software tools to help application code make good use of system resources. Forth is interactive. It is conducive to developing modular, well-tested code in shorter development times. It can also result in very concise code. Some programmers are not accustomed to languages with such brevity, directness, and (apparent) simplicity. Forth has a reputation for rapid development, lean code, and superb performance.

Lua is a powerful, efficient, lightweight, embeddable scripting language. It supports procedural programming, object-oriented programming, functional programming, data-driven programming, and data description. Lua combines simple procedural syntax with powerful data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible semantics. Lua is dynamically typed, runs by interpreting bytecode with a register-based virtual machine, and has automatic memory management with incremental garbage collection, making it ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping. Lua has a deserved reputation for performance. To claim to be "as fast as Lua" is an aspiration of other scripting languages. Several benchmarks show Lua as the fastest language in the realm of interpreted scripting languages. Lua is fast not only in fine-tuned benchmark programs, but in real life too. Substantial fractions of large applications have been written in Lua.