The thing is that in all those 49 years we could already have had a backwards-incompatible reshape of the language. Leaving old cruft behind would have brought

The thing is that in all those 49 years we could already have had a backwards-incompatible reshape of the language. Leaving old cruft behind would have brought immense improvements! I develop in C and C++ and think this would apply to both. However with the painful experience that was the Python 2 to 3 debacle, it's clear to me that the only way to do such upgrade is with an all-in commitment. See Ruby: breaking compatibility hasn't ever been as discussed and polemic as in Python. You just upgrade and tell the world: here's the new version, and the old one will be supported for not a day further than 4 years. People would complain but at the end of the day the world keeps turning. We could be already at C 3.0 and be much happier without all the old compatibility baggage that the language drags with it.