Pascal.

Like, all of it. People who decry it think of Wirth's original implementation but never the decades of (admittedly slow, Delphi was hardly blazing trails here...) improvements so they think it sucks. Pascal is great.

With AI, I think it's a future worth exploring. Great low-level and efficient string handling, unlike C.

Stupendously fast compiler and linker, and it generates code that's near C++/C/Rust performance with relative ease. Cram more useful features into it; keep the memory and pointer system as it is; add more useful language concepts from other places. Hell, strap an optional GC into it for things where you don't care.

Maybe I just got off on the wrong foot with Pascal. That was the one language I learned in school that I truly hated. At this point I don't really remember what implementation/compiler we used, but whatever it was definitely was pre-Delphi.

Nice.

Brinch Hansen on Pascal Compilers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24913959

I am still in awe of Niklaus Wirth's Project Oberon: The Design of an Operating System and Compiler which includes source for everything from the hardware up and that too in a reasonable sized book - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38869366 (this is the revised 2013 edition, get also the older 1992 edition which contains everything).

When browsers made their appearance as a "platform", i thought this is how they would be implemented, small, tight, fast, fully functional and everything running on a abstract machine. Instead we got the garbage that we have today.