The language I would like to see

So if you read this blog very much you know that I talk about C a good bit. And you might ask "Well why C why not Python, Java or a more modern language?" The answer is that C sits in a niche neglected by most other programming languages. My job is in that niche of embedded systems.

C places very minimal requirements on the environment to the point that its actually fairly easy to write a C program that works directly with the computer's hardware with no OS to help. In fact by using GNU GRUB all you must do is conform to the multi-boot specification, avoid some sections of the standard library and compile with -ffreestanding -fno-builtin and maybe another flag or two. Which is surprisingly easy because few other languages can do that. Which is exactly why C/C++ is the dominate language of embedded systems (C++ is a little harder to get going but it can be done).

However i'm a little unsatisfied with that. I really wish that there was a language with somewhat higher level constructs that could be used. C++ is close to what I want but it often feels ...kludgy that things just could have been done better. Another candidate is D which is a language that's goal is to be C++ "done right". It is a reboot of adding these higher level features to C but with less weird syntax and avoiding known problems in the design of C++.

But anyway some of the features I want would be:

• Manual Memory Management with compiler supported hooks for library based garbage collectors
• Arbitrary memory manipulation through pointers or something similar
• Inline assembly
• Object Oriented
• The ability to create objects with sub-byte packing of data elements
• Very minimal support environment

Most of those features are targeted at working directly with the hardware of a computer. The language would be mainly for operating system/driver developers, embedded system developers and anyone else that ends up working very closely with the hardware.