Lua: Good or Evil?

I was just checking out Lua as I look for a language for scripting 3d applications. Lua is a neat little language that combines Algol family syntax with the Lisp idea of basic but powerful language constructs. Most exciting are functions and associative arrays. The functions act as closures and can be treated as first-class values. The associative arrays are true to their name, but with a twist in the implementation. Internally, they store values either as an array or a hash table depending on how you index the elements. PHP (associative) 'arrays' done right. I've heard Lua described as a 'fixed Javascript.' And it's speedy.

As I was going through the "Programming in Lua" book I was severely disappointed to learn that the language and relevant library functions assume 1-based indexing for arrays, strings and variadic function parameters. After more than 10 years of C, C++, Ruby and other 0-based indexing languages, that's just too much to swallow. It's a wonderful little language, but if it's going to make me throw out all my hard-earned 0-based indexing tricks and correctness reasoning skills, I won't have it.

The Lua wiki shows some controversy on the subject: http://lua-users.org/wiki/CountingFromOne but no serious moves to change anything. There was a good article by Edsger Dijkstra linked there, "Why numbering should start at zero."