I've been wanting to pick up lua for ages. My only issue, as always, is where to start. Is there a runtime I can install where I can start creating with lua? Cross platform, windows and Linux? That will allow someone with no c/c++ experience to start doing stuff with it?
I'd suggest working with LuaJIT as well because of the C API (you can easily use something like SDL and build metatypes around them) with the caveat that it's stuck at an older version of Lua[0,1].
I have used Lua a long time ago and I don't remember ever touching C/C++. You can even make simple games without ever going low level thanks to https://love2d.org/! If I recall, most https://stabyourself.net/ games are based on Love2d.
If you're using Linux/MacOS, you can copy-paste these commands on the terminal and you should be settled:
curl -L -R -O https://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.4.6.tar.gz
tar zxf lua-5.4.6.tar.gz
cd lua-5.4.6
make all test
You should find the lua executable inside the lua-5.4.6/src folder.
