Apache Groovy vs. Cython vs. Java vs. Lua Comparison Chart

Cython is an optimizing static compiler for both the Python programming language and the extended Cython programming language (based on Pyrex). It makes writing C extensions for Python as easy as Python itself. Cython gives you the combined power of Python and C to let you write Python code that calls back and forth from and to C or C++ code natively at any point. Easily tune readable Python code into plain C performance by adding static type declarations, also in Python syntax. Use combined source code level debugging to find bugs in your Python, Cython, and C code. Interact efficiently with large data sets, e.g. using multi-dimensional NumPy arrays. Quickly build your applications within the large, mature, and widely used CPython ecosystem. The Cython language is a superset of the Python language that additionally supports calling C functions and declaring C types on variables and class attributes.

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.