Yes, but in Python, you set them on every object. In Lua, you can set them once (in a prototype) and have each table share them (and possibly other methods, or a reference to another when lookup fails there). This makes certain behaviors (e.g. implementing your on object system) cheap and straightforward that would be impractical in Python.

Imagine if each Python object had one field that stored all the __blah hooks, and objects could share those. It's actually more powerful than that, but it's a good start.

This sounds very much like Python's __getattribute__ [0] method. Is there a difference I'm not understanding?

[0] http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#object.__get...

I'm not that familiar with Python, but can you use __getattribute__ to provide methods as well? Using __index is the way you typically implement inheritance in Lua.

yes.

    >>> class A(object):
    ...   def __getattribute__(self, key):
    ...     try: return object.__getattribute__(self, key)
    ...     except AttributeError: return lambda: 12
    ...
    >>> a = A()
    >>> a.asdf
    <function <lambda> at 0x7fbb8fb6f848>
    >>> a.asdf()
    12