I've been pondering similar issues re Rust a lot lately too. Mainly that it's very safe and fast, but that is offset by how difficult it is to use. I recently

I've been pondering similar issues re Rust a lot lately too. Mainly that it's very safe and fast, but that is offset by how difficult it is to use. I recently had an idea: What if i made a subset of Swift and a transpiler that outputs simple C? The C output would make it a great contender for integrations with existing code in the 'systems programming' genre. Swift is such a lovely language, far simpler than Rust, but being tied to apple's ecosystem and LLVM makes it difficult to use for many of these areas. This would also be great for embedded, which is something i'm also passionate about. End result would be: productive + simple + safe language, great for systems/embedded IoT stuff. Anyway i've submitted the idea for an R&D grant, we'll see if it goes anywhere. Would love to hear people's thoughts.