Hello Lua
Haxe is one of the best kept secrets of the programming world. Created by none other than the author of curl, it's  A C-ish, javascripty, but strictly typed language with almost infinite portability. It "compiles" to many different target languages, from PHP to Java to Python to C++ and more. It's fast, has a beefy standard library, well-documented system interfaces, and just feels fun. A remarkable accomplishment.