Welcome
What is it like?
When writing code in np, you only have to think about each current request, as opposed to more heavy-weight application server frameworks such as Ruby on Rails or Tomcat where the app is running the whole time. In this respect, np is a stateless runtime environment. This allows for a very simple development process.
It's just an experiment
At this point, np is nothing but an experiment that popped into my head, something I liked to try. It's not complete. You can't really do useful things with it yet, but it's mature enough to at least head on over to the tutorial and get a feel for the language.
Why didn't you use XYZ framework?
That was not the point of the exercise. I wanted to explore what it feels like to write a parser, a lexer, and an interpreter without using a framework or some other ready-made solution - and I didn't really consult any literature either. While that may sound foolhardy (and I'm sure the implementation pays the price for it), the point was to discover and think about a new set of problems I never experienced before. While this is clearly a learning project, I don't think it turned out so bad. Hopefully. Maybe.
So what are the dependencies?
I tried to use as little external frameworks and libraries as possible, and this is actually the second iteration of the language. The first one was written in Java, and while it was interesting and kind of worked, it became clear to me that I wanted to switch to a more minimal environment. So this second incarnation is based on the Lua runtime which is fast, small, and easy to modify.
Does the world need another language?
Probably not, but it's fun anyway. There are some things I wanted to explore with np, many of them have to do with dynamic typing and scope.