> Perl and C++ made me miserable

You compare to rather new, and "geared to learners", languages to some old and know-to-be-arcane languages.

I'd be curious what you think of, for instance, Kotlin and Elm.

And Elixir :)

I feel that's pretty close to Ruby and Crystal. I was actually hoping for something more out of line (like C++ and Perl) but more modern.

I enjoy Elixir a lot but it feels like a tool designed for a whole different purpose. I don’t really know what that purpose it. It’s possible that my brain is just not well organized for the way elixir is laid out, but Crystal is so fluid with my brain.

I pretty much love C++ and would give up my career to be able to work with it again. Especially that feeling of squishing millions of lines of data in milliseconds by running the compiled code. It is pure delight. C did make me pretty miserable, though.