I've looked at lua a little, but I really like Smalltalk syntax. :-)
It seems there are several prototype based systems (including IO the 
language) but they all seem to start out thinking Smalltalk (or Self) 
keyword syntax is a problem, whereas for me I see it as a solution.

All the best. You might find our free software, especially the PlantStudio 
program, of interest for homeschooling for your kids. :-) That's the 
biggest thing I want to port to a dynamic language like Squeak or Python 
(from Delphi).

--Paul Fernhout

Jimmie Houchin wrote:
> Hello Paul,
> 
> Interesting article. I am still looking at the linked material.
> 
> Have you looked at Lua?
> 
> http://www.lua.org
> 
> A very interesting language that I like a lot. It is very small has some 
> Smalltalk like characteristics, but is a Prototype language. Actually it 
> seems to handle various paradigms quite well. It has objects, 
> prototypes, modules, closures, coroutines, tail-recursive, etc. and a 
> very clean and small implementation in C. Very, very portable, 
> embeddable, and very fast. Compare it to Ruby, Python and GST on Alioth. 
> It integrates easily and well with libraries written in C, etc.  It is 
> the scripting language built into SciTE.
> 
> Its biggest weakness for me and many, is that it does not currently have 
> a rich set of libraries. But I believe that is very doable. I would love 
> to see Lua with a rich set of libraries like Python's. But it is not 
> without libraries. One would just need to see if it has what one needs.
> 
> I much prefer it as a language to both Python and Ruby. Its syntax is 
> clean and nice. I find it easier to think in Lua than either Python or 
> Ruby. And as one who is not a computer professional, the fact that I can 
> read the book over and over is a big plus. I finally understand 
> closures. :)  (at least as presented in PIL2)
> 
> I am hoping that someday soon that libraries could be written for Lua 
> and it have an equally rich system as Python or Ruby. A rich Lua system 
> arriving around or before Python 3, Ruby 2, etc. would provide for an 
> interesting alternative. And I don't believe it would have to equal 
> Python's or Ruby's to be an excellent alternative to Python or Ruby.
> 
> It isn't perfect. But I think its problems are definitely fixable.
> 
> Lua is MIT licensed. So it is compatible with anything you want to do.
> 
> Just wanted to toss that out there. Didn't quite mean to get so 
> evangelistic on the Squeak-list. But oh well. I love Squeak. But I've 
> learned to love Lua also. I just tolerate Python, no love. :)
> 
> Again thanks for the essay.
> 
> Jimmie Houchin
> Homeschooling father of 9 ;)
>   Yes I read your writings on edu-sig.