> It seems to me that we ought to have a system-level language which builds upon the learnings of the past 20+ years
I mean, Rust does. I builds on 20+ years of compiler and type system advancements. Then Syntax is verbose if you include all then things you can possibly do. If you stick to the basics it's pretty similar to most other languages. Hell, I'd say a lot of syntax Rust is similar to type-hinted Python.
Having said that, comparing a GC'd dynamic language to a systems programming language just isn't a fair comparison. When you need to be concerned about memory allocation you just need more syntax.
I mean, Rust does. I builds on 20+ years of compiler and type system advancements. Then Syntax is verbose if you include all then things you can possibly do. If you stick to the basics it's pretty similar to most other languages. Hell, I'd say a lot of syntax Rust is similar to type-hinted Python.
Having said that, comparing a GC'd dynamic language to a systems programming language just isn't a fair comparison. When you need to be concerned about memory allocation you just need more syntax.