>>16
@1
Not quite. I'd often lurked threads and forums pertaining to Lua, and even more often attempted to dissect scripts as a way to learn the general structure of Lua(this was before I actually tried a proper way of learning the language), so this helped a bit when I got to the point of arrays and references.
Basically, I learned from others' mistakes and mishaps to avoid some very odd abnormalities in the language, and to assume a different way of 'parsing' the actual code, so to speak, to sort of figure out how it would work before actually testing in hopes to fix a design flaw before one arises.
@2
C-inspired syntax like Java's was ... strange, to say the least.
Its object-oriented programming paradigm was truly the most difficult thing to learn, and from C++, memory management was very foreign. I, of course, was accustomed to the freedom that Lua has, which has no particular way to do things.
After I learned the general syntax, though, I instantly fell in love with the languages(C++ & Java). They're now my primary languages, but I occasionally use Lua for experimental things where writing them in C would make me a profligate.
I have not tried to implement Java-like OOP into Lua, just because the standard way of doing things seemed pretty complete, without need of adjustment. Did write some generic libraries, like a string compressor and decompressor.. but nothing that tampered with the syntax itself.
A buddy of mine found ways to introduce C syntax into Lua, so you could write C-like syntax and it would work with the Lua interpreter.