We could’ve gotten something more like a simpler Swift if some attention was paid to state of the art in language research and implementation. No nil, composable errors, integrated generics, sum types, etc.
If you like language archeology, compare K&R C with the state of systems programming languages outside Bell Labs, in regards to safety and language features, since JOVIAL was introduced in 1958.
Hence why there is a certain irony towards the opinion UNIX is done, yet the efforts towards language design are as they are.
Plan 9, Inferno and Limbo came to be, and that was it.
