Tcl and various scheme dialects were popular, but they have a pretty unusual syntax, at least when viewed from a typical C/Algol-ish programmer. Lua just came a

Tcl and various scheme dialects were popular, but they have a pretty unusual syntax, at least when viewed from a typical C/Algol-ish programmer. Lua just came at the right time and place and was more "usual" than that, also with a pretty small package and permissive license. And I would say that this argument still holds true. For extending a game or application, I'd feel pretty bad forcing people to use JS, for example (unless it's EE, where the gloves are off). Wren might be an option, but it's certainly a lot less proven. Also, there's LuaJIT, if you really need some performance in a small package. StackOverflow might not be the best source for end-user scripting. (Never mind that I have my doubts about any statistic where Rust ends up winning the popularity contest.)