[joeberon]

Well it's only because of the issue with the built-in editor, since lua isn't really that concise in terms of character count imo. Also the official tutorial is a published book which I find a little distasteful although understandable. You are right though I can't really think of a better language to use

[WillPostForFood]

You can attach an external editor if you want, though I think it is not needed for learning. There is more value in the tight integration than the conveniences of a great text editor.

I've used this Sublime Text Package which works well:

https://packagecontrol.io/packages/PICO-8