Zig mentions D in justifying its existence

[Tony]

I am surprised C hasn't tried to become a "better C". Add a 
string datatype (and maybe other datatypes like datetime). Add an 
array type (static and/or dynamic) that doesn't suffer from 
"array decay" when passed to a function or returned from a 
function. Provide an alternative to the ridiculous syntax for 
declaring a function pointer. And copy the scope() guard from D. 
They could also add some data structure code to the standard 
library. Not a lot of changes and suddenly the language is a lot 
more usable for all those GNU programs (and any like them) that 
are written in C.