Actually, Lua's table object is split into two parts. The array part, which is accessed using numerical indices, and the dictionary. It's done like that to enable fast array access, and I do find it an incredible useful feature in Lua.

In my experience 1-based indexing is not a problem when you're just writing Lua code. I've sometimes been frustrated when creating Lua bindings to C-modules which involved some kind of array access though.