Lua: The Tiny Language Born From Brazil's 1993 Trade Barriers Now Powering WoW, Roblox and Nginx
bigaiguy · x · 2026-09-05
In 1993, Brazil's 'market reserve' trade rules made buying foreign software nearly impossible, so three professors at a Catholic university in Rio — Roberto Ierusalimschy, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo and Waldemar Celes — built their own tiny language, Lua (Portuguese for 'moon'), originally to let oil-company geologists type instructions into engineering tools.
Its defining constraints became its secret: small, fast, and designed from day one to be embedded as a 'guest' inside C/C++ programs, handling frequently-changing logic without recompiling.
Where it runs today:
- World of Warcraft — players rewrite their UI in it
- Roblox — the language every kid on the platform learns
- Adobe Lightroom, Nginx, Wireshark, Angry Birds
The entire language is about 24,000 lines of C — small enough for one person to read. The authors still teach and never raised a round.
More from Companies & People
- Inside OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra Hackathon: pairs, 5 hours, unlimited credits — gabrielchua · 2026-09-05
- OpenAI to host GPT-6 Astra Hackathon in Singapore on Sept 13 with unlimited credits — gabrielchua · 2026-09-05
- Katya Scheinberg on moving to Cornell ORIE and editing journal MOR — michaelchchoi · 2026-09-05
- Codex community plans ~40 global meetups with hackathons and multi-agent workshops — gabrielchua · 2026-09-05
- Altman Confirms OpenAI Will Build Humanoid Robots, Starting With Data Centers — xmercury_one · 2026-09-05
- Nvidia acquires Station F team for $13bn in biggest-ever French startup exit — fleurdevie · 2026-09-05