Neither better nor worth by itself, honestly. The reason why it sucks is that integration with C is one of Lua's key selling points: peeking a convention differ

Neither better nor worth by itself, honestly. The reason why it sucks is that integration with C is one of Lua's key selling points: peeking a convention different from C's is a gratuitous pain. It won't be fixed, because it would break existing programs in too subtle ways. Lua compatiility is sometimes broken, but only if it breaks into easy-to-find-and-fix ways.