I want to second Rust. I've been writing C for 5+ years and finally decided to give Rust a serious try... and I love it. I never ever thought I would say this, but I don't see myself going back to C (with minor exceptions)

I recall being excited the first time i learnt C. But after i learnt other programming languages, the defects of C started to appear clearly before my eyes. C++ is even worse (in terms of things that look like hastily designed)

Rust is comparably more coherent and elegantly designed.

That was pretty much my reaction too, as someone whose first programming language was C …