Lua came first but was both encouraged by and hampered by Brazil's limitations on technology imports at the time. The lack of access to other tools is what led

Lua came first but was both encouraged by and hampered by Brazil's limitations on technology imports at the time. The lack of access to other tools is what led the team to develop it in the first place. But the country's lack of connection with other IT outlets at the time prevented Lua from taking over. If Lua had gotten "out in the wild" earlier, it would be where JS/TS are today. It's just as powerful as JS and more in some ways, such as embedding and encapsulation. It's also widely used as a modding language in the game industry precisely because it can be "dropped into" another project and allow coding in a limited way without affecting the other project.