It might be that the only real C replacement in the author's sense is a language of annotations/validations and idioms for C. How else would you get everything

It might be that the only real C replacement in the author's sense is a language of annotations/validations and idioms for C. How else would you get everything that C has now -- the compiler support, the well-tire-kicked-spec, the ABI, the low feature-rate and concomitant unchanging character -- besides basically just being C with some minor (and unchanging) addenda? The weird thing about Go relative to all this is the fact that interoperates so poorly with C.