I feel obliged to mention doas[1], which is a sudo alternative from openBSD. It is written in c, but tries to be smaller and easier to configure. I am not qualified to vouch for or against it, but it is interesting. 1: https://man.openbsd.org/doas
OpenBSD has maintained exceptionally good taste when it comes to change. When they rip out and replace a "classic" utility, they invariably make a modern classic: openssh, pf, doas
When others rip out a system and replace wholesale, they often just do the hard work to secure the existing thing: Wayland vs. Xenocara
I don't know that there's any objective way to know ahead of time whether replacement or repair is the right approach. But the fact that such a relatively small project such as OpenBSD has managed such outsized positive impact across the open source landscape speaks volumes to their intuitions here.