"the code some dozen developers write ends up with all imaginable ways of writing the same thing."

I do know what you mean. But that's not really the languages problem but of the coding guidelines and using code review to maintain legibility.

I don't know. I don't have the same problem with Lua and Python. Lua is simply small enough not to have baggage and Python seems to have a healthy community that keeps updated with best practices. It also helps that both languages are designed to be readable. C is also simple enough, as long as code doesn't abuse pointers.