[vandyswa]

FWIW, another take on "C Alternative" is the D programming language:

https://wiki.dlang.org/Tutorials

Comparatively mature, there's even a freeware book which is quite good:

http://www.ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html

[macintux]

Walter Bright, the creator of D, is an active commenter here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=WalterBright

Zig is also worth mentioning, and pops up frequently.

[sdsd]

Once, on a previous account, he actually replied to me. It's like a kid going to guitar center and the guy who replaces your strings is Axl Rose.

If you're on here, Walter, you're my hero. I also once interacted with Brendan Eich, who I admire as much for his role in web history as for his activism.

[bsrkf]

I always thought it was more akin to a C++ than a C alternative, and reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language) seems to rather confirm this notion:

  "originated as a re-engineering of C++"
  "influenced by Java, Python, Ruby, C#, and Eiffel"
  "design by contract, ranges, built-in container iteration concepts, and type inference"
  "array slicing, nested functions and lazy evaluation."
  "Java-style single inheritance with interfaces and mixins"
  "function overloading and operator overloading"
  "supports five main programming paradigms" (including OOP)
  ... et cetera

Though it does support things like in-line assembly and the like, I'm sure most C programmers would pass on it, as a C-alternative, based on those factoids.

[vandyswa]

Yes, I understand the C++ aspect, but I was never a C++ coder, and D "fit in my hand" in a way which made me certain that its creator had coded extensively in C and understood the aspects which made it so perfect for its time. It really felt like D, not D++ to me.

(Oh, disclosure, I'm just a D user, no organizational or financial interests here.)

[lerno]

D was never a C alternative, it was a C++ alternative.

[bsrkf]

^ and this person (no affiliation) has a much "truer" C alternative in the making, just for everyone's information: https://c3-lang.org/

Haven't gotten around to trying it out, but skimmed the documents a lot at one point. Always try to keep tabs on it, doesn't get the love it should.

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Doesn't having a whole subset of the language called "Better C" qualify?

[teleforce]

Do you realize that D has betterC and now it also supports C compilation natively? [1] [2]

[1] D as a C Replacement (187 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20323114

[2] Adding ANSI C11 C compiler to D so it can import and compile C files directly (105 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27102584

[pjmlp]

Depends on the point of view, especially those of us that think there is no reason for C other than legacy code, since C++ exists.

By the way, code that I wrote yesterday is legacy.

[ksec]

It certainly is, also known as D as C or Das C.