The problem is fixable in C++. std::span is the fat pointer; std::array is the checked array. All that's missing is a compiler option that gives warnings/errors

The problem is fixable in C++. std::span is the fat pointer; std::array is the checked array. All that's missing is a compiler option that gives warnings/errors when the legacy native [] features are used. C is probably unfixable. But that's a different language. Presumably compilers would allow conversion of spans to native pointer arguments when calling methods declared as "extern 'C'".