[esfandia]

Maybe a cleaned-up Pascal would do the trick? It was a great teaching language back when I was a student. Low complexity, strong static typing, compiled language, no GC, pretty fast. No pointer arithmetic, harder to shoot oneself in the foot, but still easy access to pointers and easy ability to manage memory.

edit: What I meant by "cleaned-up" Pascal was addressing some of Kernighan's criticisms as seen in https://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html (also, the Pascal syntax is a bit bloated)

[zoom6628]

Freepascal pretty much is the cleaned up version you describe. Fast, free, multiplatform, and just plain sensible. Overdue for a resurgence of use. Maybe the foundation in charge could rename it Cpascal and it would suddenly lift in popularity.

Pascal was a language I learnt in 1982 and love it for its elegance. The only thing i dislike and is still around its the begin... End and only because I'm a lazy typist and lazy reader.For me is hard to find Begin-end blocks... Harder than looking for stupid squiggles used in other languages. Go figure.

[augustk]

Check out Oberon which is the current Pascal. I use the OBNC compiler (https://www.miasap.se/obnc).

[pvitz]

The Oberon specification on this website is also a great and concise read: https://www.miasap.se/obnc/oberon-report.html