MoonGhost parent
How about thin C++ wrapper? The language with the same features, but more human friendly. It should be easily directly translated to C++. Preferably both ways.
There are languages like D and Carbon that attempt this. But there are too many existing large C++ code bases to not continue evolving C++ itself as well.
That's what Herb Sutter's cppfront/cpp2 is meant to do. Same semantics, sane defaults, nicer syntax (IMO).
C++'s semantics are also broken in interesting ways: UB, implicit conversions, arrays, exceptions, exceptions from destructors, etc. Papering over them won't help all that much. It's more efficient to just swallow the bullet and switch to Rust (or maybe Zig).
Yeah no switching a group of developers over to some new language is not more efficient. It is a lot of work. And on top of that you will need to add time to either wrap your existing code base or rewrite it with developers who are new to the language they are using. You will have folks who like that and can do it, but you will also have a lot who would have a much harder time with that. Most corporations would legitimately ask what is switching the language gaining us and is it worth it. Now the conclusion might be that it is worth it, but it is equally possible that they decide against it. Never underestimate inertia.
Many of these inadvisable semantics are fixable in practice, they are just a default that requires additional effort to minimize or eliminate.
That aside, it isn't that easy to switch languages because C++ is more expressive in a systems context in important ways. Porting existing modern systems C++ to e.g. Rust makes this pretty obvious. (I think porting to Zig would likely be a bit easier but I've never actually tried.)