[saghm]

Honestly, it might almost act as a "honeypot" to give people a convenient target to complain about, which makes it easier for the rest of the language to get viewed as a whole rather than nitpicked. Sometimes I think people like to have at least one negative thing to say about something new they learn, whether it's to show that they understand enough to be able to find something or it's to be "cool" enough not to just like everything.

[chii]

that would be a galaxy brain move on the part of lua.

[saghm]

To be clear, I'm not claiming that I think this was the original intent for implementing array indexes like this; I'm just theorizing that this might explain why this ends up being such a fixation when it comes to discusses downsides of Lua.