[spc476]

If you are willing to fork Lua (and it's been done---one example is Ravi, which brings static typing) you can fix the verbose lambda syntax (http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2017-04/msg00387.html) and add ternary operators (which I haven't missed). I haven't found the mixing of arrays and dictionaries that bad in practice (and I do a lot of Lua programming at work) and the default scoping ... yeah, I can see that (I've learned to deal).

[stevekemp]

I had a fork a long time ago solely to allow the use of "?" in function-names. Writing:

    function alive?
       ... blah
    end

Is so much more natural, after being exposed to ruby. But maintaining forks is hard, so I've slowly gotten use to the standard.

It's a shame that the development is so conservative, and closed, but despite that it is a great language to play with.

[jpfr]

    A function that tests for something involving its arguments
    is called a predicate and usually ends in p or -p.

http://www.cliki.net/Naming+conventions