A couple of other alternatives to C and C++ are D, D2, OOC and Cyclone. In a more functional vein, BitC and Fortress. There are also a few interesting languages that compile to C, like Vala (C#-like), Cython (Python-like), Lush (Lisp-like), Chicken (Scheme-like).
We recently reached self-hosting status, in which we compiled Rust with itself, and over the past few weeks we've been working on making the compiler much faster (over 7x in fact).
I did actually think of Rust, but after looking at the website I got the impression it was still very alpha. I'm all for competition, it's cool to see it's in active development.
Lisp never became mainstream and if it hasn't succeeded up to now, it most likely never will. D & co. didn't make it either and things aren't going to improve for them. Great point about Cython though, and thanks for the Vala pointer, I wasn't aware of it.
