Either Go or Rust would be great. They're both good alternatives to C. D, Zig, Crystal, Nim are other ones you might consider.<p>An alternative to these that I use for hobby projects, is Ada. It's weird and most people laugh at me for using it. It's super simple (you can learn it in about a month), and it writes like a more strongly-typed and safer, Pascal version of C. It also has built-in concurrency and provides low-level control. I did a presentation at FOSDEM to give an overview of the language since most people don't know much about it (<a href="https://fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/ada_outsiders_guide/" rel="nofollow">https://fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/ada_outsiders_guide/</a>).<p>There's a tool called Alire (<a href="https://alire.ada.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://alire.ada.dev/</a>) that will install the toolchain for you and simplifies building and running. The open source community is super tiny, probably 1/10th or smaller of that of the Rust or Go communities. However, since the language has been around and evolving for decades, it's surprisingly easy to get answers to questions, since there's quite a few very experienced folks around. Though it's easy to make bindings, there's relatively few available. However, since the language's open source scene is new compared to the rest of the language, it's a place you and your friends could make a big impact.