Pointers hell and static typing.... No chance to replace Clang. Only a C-like lang without pointers and type inference would lure programmers to replace C. Something less hostile to the developer.
C can't be replaced by a language without pointers. If a language without pointers was attractive, a language other than C would already be used. C code is generally used with the intent to make use of pointers and such - we've had less pointy (and more abstract) alternatives forever for use cases that are suited to it.
I don’t know… after working around the performance limitations of JavaScript and Ruby for a decade, I am happy to have an option that allows me to control (at least to some degree) memory layout of my program.
All(ish) code used to be written in C and shell. To what degree had eg JavaScript replaced C already? I think quite a bit.
How would a language that wants to compete with C even work without a feature to directly address memory locations (i.e. "pointers")?
I don't understand the "static typing vs type inference" argument, so I'll not comment on that :) (there are plenty of statically typed languages with type inference)
> How would a language that wants to compete with C even work without a feature to directly address memory locations (i.e. "pointers")?
"Pointer" types could just be library-based and architecture-specific. It doesn't really need to be part of the base language. This would make it easier to support things like GPU-bound code where general memory addressing isn't really a thing, or other features like multiple address spaces, segmented memory or the CHERI memory tagging extension.
