I have been having a lot of fun with Lua. What amazes me is how much power it provides when coupled with things like Mako server (Barracuda), OpenResty or (my favorite) redbean/fullmoon. Full app server in a few MB. Lua itself feels like Python did early on - before it became so complex.
If you Like Lua's syntax and you wish you could achieve C speeds <i>and</i> have the metaprogramming ability of Java (Generics), by all means try <a href="https://nelua.io/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://nelua.io/</a> , you won't regret it!