I was going to post his list of system languages that came before C (and were better&#x2F;safer) but can&#x27;t find his post. Notable examples, before or after C, are:<p>Burroughs&#x27; ALGOL&#x27;s their safer OS was written in
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Burroughs_large_systems#ALGOL" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Burroughs_large_systems#ALGOL</a><p>Modula-2 with its better readability and safety invented in Lilith homebrew system:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cfbsoftware.com&#x2F;modula2&#x2F;Lilith.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cfbsoftware.com&#x2F;modula2&#x2F;Lilith.pdf</a><p>Hansen&#x27;s Concurrent Pascal was concurrency-safe in tiny runtime; Edison was C minimalism on same PDP-11 with cleaner, safer design<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;brinch-hansen.net&#x2F;papers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;brinch-hansen.net&#x2F;papers&#x2F;</a><p>Modula-3 had many C++ advantages, Modula-style safety, and without C&#x27;s BS:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Modula-3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Modula-3</a><p>Note: SPIN OS was written in it. Supported type-safe compilation and linking of code into running kernel for acceleration.<p>PL&#x2F;I was one of predominant languages. IBM&#x27;s mainframe OS&#x27;s were written in a version of it (PL&#x2F;S).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PL&#x2F;I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PL&#x2F;I</a><p>Ada was systematically and cleverly designed for safety against most issues. Still is:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adacore.com&#x2F;knowledge&#x2F;technical-papers&#x2F;safe-secure&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adacore.com&#x2F;knowledge&#x2F;technical-papers&#x2F;safe-secur...</a><p>Note: Army Secure OS (ASOS), MarteOS, and Muen kernel were written in Ada leveraging its safety properties.<p>That should cover the ones that have been around since the 60&#x27;s-80&#x27;s. Doesn&#x27;t even count functional-oriented languages like Common LISP, Schemes, or Standard ML. LISP had both OS&#x27;s and CPU&#x27;s made in it and for it. SML &amp; Ocaml kicked ass in app correctness and compiler writing. Also ignored niche-specific ones like COBOL or Fortran that I thought weren&#x27;t suitable for a C comparison.<p>Safe, C variants were even made to address its problems:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.uic.edu&#x2F;pub&#x2F;Main&#x2F;PhDQualifyingExam&#x2F;Sample4.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.uic.edu&#x2F;pub&#x2F;Main&#x2F;PhDQualifyingExam&#x2F;Sample4.pd...</a><p>Note: Cyclone concepts got rolled into Rust. So some benefit there.<p>There&#x27;s also modern attempts like D, Go, and Rust that try to replace it to various degrees. Wirth&#x27;s Modula work lives on in Active Oberon System and Go language. Almost all are moving in a direction with ALGOL68&#x27;s features being the baseline. That there was better stuff before C on 1960&#x27;s hardware suggests that people should&#x27;ve ditched it or fixed it up a long time ago when hardware limitations weren&#x27;t holding it back anymore.<p>And let it be known that those are the <i>only</i> reason C was designed how it was. BCPL author actually wanted an ALGOL variant but hardware didn&#x27;t work well enough. Rest was accidents of history. More detail that stretches further back than OP in this link:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;UAQaWuWG" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;UAQaWuWG</a>