My general opinion is that, if you are suffering from these kinds of errors, you are "developing too fast."
Which is to say, if you took time to ensure there were no typos, added asserts, metatable index guards where appropriate, etc. then the problems would basically just go away. Yes it would take some effort. And the amount of effort and appropriateness of these measures depends on the program and the programmer. E.g. whether you tend to make a lot of typos, or how much syntax highlighting support your editor gives you.
So in general, my advice is to ensure you are taking time and measures to deal with these issues, if you are having them. Just that's more of a development workflow issue than a language environment issue.
