or Rust if you'd rather not touch C++. C with improvements suffers from uncanny valley. If it's not plain C, then it's weird and non-standard, and C programmer

or Rust if you'd rather not touch C++. C with improvements suffers from uncanny valley. If it's not plain C, then it's weird and non-standard, and C programmers don't want it. So if you're deviating from pure boring C, then you can just as well switch to another language, and one that doesn't have legacy baggage.