**Lua** is a programming language developed in 1993 to extend and integrate programs. Therefore, Lua is known as a #key# glue language: allows for a component-based approach to software development because high-level components can be glued together. #key#. These components are written in a statistically compiled language like C or C++. 

Lua is a complete scripting language that can, more or less, be used for the same purposes as languages like Perl, Ruby, or Python. Lua is particularly beneficial as it is designed to be extensible, lightweight, portable, and fast. 

> Lua is built over the C programming language. 


# Extensible
It is really simple to interface with C/C++ and other languages such as Fortran and Java.

# Lightweight
Lua is a small language with few concepts -- its complete distributions are small in size.

# Portable
Lua can run on almost all platforms including Windows, Unix, macOS, PalmOS, and IBM mainframe. Additionally, Lua VM is embed-able (unlike node.js) and scalable, which allows it to cater to various use cases.

# Fast
Independent benchmarks show Lua to be one of the fastest scripting (interpreted) languages.

What is the Lua programming language?

Lua is an extensible, lightweight, portable, and fast scripting language, ideal for integrating and extending software components.