One advantage of writing C code is that you don't have annoying discussions about what idiomatic code is supposed to look like, and what language subset is the right one ;)

For the cutting edge I would recommend Zig btw, much less language complexity than both modern C++ and Rust.

One good but less visible side effect of C23 is that it harmonizes more syntax with C++ (like ... = {} vs {0}) which makes it a bit less annoying for us C library maintainers to support the people how want to compile their C code with a C++ compiler.

Of course they will, just like they did in the past with C11, GNU extensions, or some of the individual features that are now rolled into C23. For example, the 0b notation for binary numbers is widely used in the MCU world.

The microcontroller toolchains are generally built on top of GCC, so they get the features for free. There are some proprietary C compilers that are chronically lagging behind, but they are not nearly as important as they used to be two decades ago.

these features will eventually trickle down into the mainstream, kind of like C11 is doing at the moment

also, unless you're targeting embedded or a very wide set of architectures, there's no reason why you couldn't start using C23 today

The `thread_local` specifier is used on a few microcontroller platforms already, but would be absolutely illegal in C11 and before to use. However, it vastly simplifies memory management in a threaded context.

Why would I rather step into the world of C++ just to deal with that?