If someone wants more realistic (or science-like) metric, TIOBE index could do:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
Lua is on 21-st place. (Indeed, TIOBE index is arguable, but is better
than measuring Reddit subscribers.)
Yet if you look at how TIOBE generates those numbers:
"The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings."
Or in other words they look at how popular the language is based on what is happening on the internet.
That being said, I, personally, do not understand the question either.
People do not talk about Lua, they just use it.
I don't think you can honestly make that argument. People do talk about their interests and passions.
2. To get better opensource libraries and other infrastructure. Lua
opensource infrastructure got better over the years, but, in my
opinion, it is still in a rather sad shape. I think that this,
however, is more of a chicken and egg problem...
Its always a chicken egg problem, but it is a problem which every other language has had to face and which the successful and popular languages have overcome. There is only one way to get more libraries and that is to write them, and to write them you need people, and buzz and chatter on the internet certainly helps to get those people which in turn gets those libraries written.
So you can say that there is no reason to talk about Lua because it just works, but silence certainly isn't helping anything, and I think everyone realizes that Lua could certainly use more community support.
