Was Lua ever in competition with Python? Lua was for embedded systems and integrated as a scripting platform for other products. That's a vastly different market and design purpose than a general-purpose scripting language like Python. What has Python actual won over Lua that any other language hasn't won?

I'm actually surprised JavaScript hasn't surpassed Lua for the kind of things Lua is designed for -- but Lua seems to hold on and people aren't generally embedding JavaScript as the scripting language for other programs.