if x + y + z > a
    or verylongconditionalhere ()
    or anotherverylongconditionalhere ()
  then
    ...

Template meta-programming maps to C pre-processor macros. The sad part with both is generated code cannot be examined thus the unreadable compiler errors and slower compilation as it's regenerated every time.

Slightly off-topic: Rust can also be mentally mapped to C.

Article also misses: comparing speed of full rebuilds. Pch gives massive speedup on edit-compile-debug cycle or when several modules can share a single pch.

You'll need a glob function, cd/getcwd/setcwd, pretty-printer. That's about it.

Lua stdlib replaces sed, awk, grep, cut, tr, tail, etc.

Startup time is the best. In my testing, a lua script that functions like `echo` runs faster than echo.

Not too hard. Emacs does it with the .emacs file, mixing generated and manual content.

Lisp killer features were GC, good data representation, first class functions. Lua has all that and more. But its being a "thin" library over the C runtime shows through the clothes.

A copy was made instead of a reference. I've been bitten by that.