Thanks for the reply and I feel quite honored you wrote a full piece to answer my question. I haven't read the new piece yet, but will soon.

Based solely on your short answer, I find intriguing that it boils down to a "better C", not a "C with this and that". No wonder most alternatives fail. They are not better Cs, they are kinda-Cs with this and that. And, since most add OOP, it is quite a big "this and that".

About Linus and kernels, I am by no means a kernel developer or linux contributor, so I was more of guessing. What I know is he is against pretty much anything except C for what he does and this always made me wonder if is it C that is really that good for what he does or "what he does" that is too made to rely on Cness.

Regarding macros, indeed, they are more harm than good, I agree. I mainly said that to illustrate that C has means to implement meta programming by itself. A really bad way, but it has one.