D was also trying to bring a ruby/python-like experience to the C++ developer. can't say how well they've succeeded, but I feel it's definitely a strictly better language than C++ at this point. from my perspective its main weakness is not being able to generate a runtimeless library that I can call from other languages; without that it doesn't offer enough over ocaml for me to use it, but that would have been a killer feature. (rust does offer that, which is why it's on top of my to-learn list right now)