Speaking from my own very limited experience, I think C++ can be pretty nice if you basically write straight C but borrow from the C++ STL. Smart pointers (std::unique_ptr, std::shared_ptr, etc), collections (std::vector, std::unordered_map, std::set, std::stack, std::priority_queue), and stuff like std::tuple and std::optional really make C feel less clunky without getting too gross.

Ha, I was just thinking about where to find some STL-style collections earlier today and was lamenting not knowing having a great lib in mind.

Thanks for the suggestion! Seems like a good place to start.

Glib (https://developer.gnome.org/glib/2.60/glib-Miscellaneous-Mac...) is a great STL like library for C. It's got the basic data structures, a good API and plenty of utilities. My favorite is g_autoptr (https://developer.gnome.org/glib/stable/glib-Miscellaneous-M...) for deterministic cleanup. There's enough to make C a reasonably pleasant scripting language.

If you want to know what a reasonable subset of C++ looks like don't hesitate to check out the source code for Doom 3.

Which contains: #define private public #define protected public