[rewmie]

> Proper public/private types,

Modules either have types as part of their interface, or haven't. I C, the declarations shipped in the interface header represent the interface, and the types declared in it are public types.

C also supports symbols with internal linkage.

What exactly is missing?

> module initialization/shutdown,

What's wrong with initializing objects? Languages such as Rust also rely on factory methods to instantiate objects.

> linking with type checking,

The interface headers define the symbols, which must correspond to the symbols handled by the linker. What's missing?

> namespaces.

That definitely C doesn't support as a first class citizen, but this is nothing that symbol prefixes don't handle.

What's missing, then?