In general terms, any language aiming to be lower-level than C should - have an "abstract" machine that is more concrete than C (and by extension less portable

In general terms, any language aiming to be lower-level than C should - have an "abstract" machine that is more concrete than C (and by extension less portable) - be easier to lower into optimal assembly (especially loop ops) - give you strong and precise compile-time guarantees about memory layout (padding, bitfields), variable sizes, register spilling, stack usage, etc.