Comment by YourDadVPN

There isn't a language that achieves C's performance, access to hardware and portability while also having superior syntax. The reason C is hard is because it makes sacrifices to enable the above. A Rust (for example) compiler targeting many microcontrollers (8/16-bit word size (not all), Harvard architectures like AVR, non-8-bit byte) simply can't be written due to assumptions made by the spec. Many such architectures are still in use.