[tiffanyh]

It might be truly that Lua is simpler but also keep in mind that LuaJIT was entirely created by a single person.

So it can be done.

And to quote Mike Pall again

"" tl;dr: The reason why X is slow, is because X's implementation is slow, unoptimized or untuned. Language design just influences how hard it is to make up for it. There are no excuses. "