> most people would not define it as a virtual machine. It is certainly not an operating system running on another operating system which is the most popular definition today.
There are two kinds of VMs: system VMs and process VMs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine)
Maybe refrain from 'correcting' someone on common definitions if you aren't familiar with the kinds and amount of commonality of all definitions?
"Virtual Machine" does today commonly mean an interpreter based on opcode instructions, aka process VM.
Furthermore, using 'interpreter' for an opcode based VM is less common, I feel like your suggestion goes backwards by your own metric.
> Nor is it as capable as the VM's that run environments such as Java or .NET, which is the other definition people might use.
So I'm curious what you were expecting when you clicked on "Simple Virtual Machine in C" linked to github? Is it likely that someone's open source project is going to compete with the 2 largest and most widely distributed runtimes on the planet?
How do you measure capability? If the VM is Turing complete, is it really less "capable"?
What is the point of your negative comment? Do you want the author to change the title? Do you want other people to never make another VM because Java already has one? And what kind of responses do you hope for next time you share your open source project on HN?