> If Lua was one, then it'd get the same popularity boost instead (and all the great tooling, large community etc that came with it). And there are so many lan

> If Lua was one, then it'd get the same popularity boost instead (and all the great tooling, large community etc that came with it). And there are so many languages with no such popularity boost that nevertheless have much better tooling than Lua. In fact, JS is very exceptional (in that the growth drove the tooling) and in many cases the tooling tends to keep up with the growth---Lua didn't, even though it could have done better. The alternative reality is an easy way to excuse this situation but also meaningless here.