1. C is simple,elegant but not-so-productive, not-so-modern and, for sure, very very unsafe. Oldskool hardcore, trust the programmer, quake language.

2. Modern C++ is so zero-overhead template and otherwise compile-time obsessed language. Yes it can be productive, somewhat safer than C, but the language is so terribly complicated, that it really misses the point imo.

3. Rust is modern low-level language with safety agenda and zero-overhead abstractions. The type system is still hard to master. Guess this one fits low-level system programming very well.

4. We really need a low-level productive modern language with just a 'convenience' level of safety, but high degree of control over low level performance: simd, alignment, atomics, cache levels etc.