Yea, Solidity is not the only language of code that compiles to EVM bytecode. There are other languages that also do so: Serpent, LLL, and Viper. "Better" is subjective, but it looks like Viper is intended to be more audit-able. But it's also still a work in progress.

Serpent and LLL are apparently lower-level than Solidity.

https://steemit.com/ethereum/@balzss/the-many-languages-of-e...

Bamboo looks quite interesting. I think it’s mainly focused on modelling the state changes smart contracts undergo more explicitly. https://github.com/pirapira/bamboo

Serpent is deprecated.

It would (probably) be fairly trivial to get any modular compiler to spit out bytecode for the Etherium VM...fairly trivial for someone with the gumption and skills I mean.

Or someone could add some analysis stages to the solidity compiler since all the information you need is floating around the web in various papers -- actually spent a good part of the last week reading about abstracting abstract machines and static analysis for my next investigative coding project when I quit being lazy.