The same kind of introspection lead me to create civboot.org[2] I'm currently creating a Lua-based development environment from scratch in (nearly) pure Lua[3].

There are others out there. You're not alone.

PS: Why Lua? Because it's small and readable and makes a great extension language.

[2]: github.com/vitiral/civboot [3]: github.com/vitiral/civboot/civlua