Comment by ddulaney

“Best” is really subjective and depends on your goals. It’s certainly a nice language, but it’s really a modern take on C++ rather than C. Zig is worth a mention here: it’s a modern take on C, and it tries to avoid the complex features that Rust uses to prove safety at compile time. There’s a contingent of people who don’t like the complexity of Rust or C++ but want to move away from the C footguns, and they normally become Zig fans.

That said, C is still a perfectly fine, very mainstream choice. If you just want to learn systems programming (rather than simultaneously learning systems programming and a new language), it might be the right place to start.