I agree with >>2 on C being compact enough that limiting is counterproductive. The C standard is VERY conservative about adding features. It's nothing like the feature creep C++ exhibits. I haven't looked into the latest additions but at least C99 adds a handful (not because only a few parts are useful but because there aren't to many additions to begin with) of features which are seriously useful. I have quite a bit of trust into the standards committee to keep it's reputation of not adding a ton of fluff.