It's a shame "C with classes", as C++ originally was, didn't stick around for parallel development. I work with C daily and I'm well aware of its many shortcom

It's a shame "C with classes", as C++ originally was, didn't stick around for parallel development. I work with C daily and I'm well aware of its many shortcomings (e.g. its huge list of undefined behavior and its PDP11-centric view of modern architectures), but with some effort I believe it could function as a semi-portable second-level intermediate representation. Nim uses it as such, IIRC. Compiling to C first would introduce some of its own issues, for sure, but I imagine doing so would alleviate the pressure the C++ standards committee puts on compiler vendors each time they expand the size of the kitchen sink.