I think it depends on what alternate paths the person is thinking of. I throw most GC languages out. So now my path is mostly (not all) Rust, C, C++, etc. Rust

I think it depends on what alternate paths the person is thinking of. I throw most GC languages out. So now my path is mostly (not all) Rust, C, C++, etc. Rust is great in that regard, for me at least. The stdlib is awesome, crates are awesome, powerful features like Iterators are awesome, and being confident in the code i produce is awesome. Which isn't a knock at C, but C just isn't for me.