As a complete lua noob, can you run lua without C or C++? I've always thought of it as an embedded scripting language. I intend to learn it because of that but what can it do on its own?
Also, if you want a fun way to play with it, see the LÖVE game engine. You can be making your own simple 2D games in next to no time. And I think that's a nice playground for trying out a language.
- https://love2d.org/ - https://love2d.org/wiki/Getting_Started
The main path is to implement with C or C++ bindings to the libraries you want to use and expose them as Lua module. This is the way Lua is supposed to be used.