I think generally Lua is considered a scripting language - it is suited for gluing together performance critical components built in faster languages like C, C+

I think generally Lua is considered a scripting language - it is suited for gluing together performance critical components built in faster languages like C, C++ or Rust - the kinds of GC-less languages you can make a VM, game engine or OS in. So Carp is intended to join that list of fast GC-less languages that you make the fast foundation that others then call from scripts using languages like Lua.