The choice between Rust and C-derived languages is not only about memory safety

>None of this means Rust is "bad" or that C is "better". It means they optimise for different values. Rust optimises for correctness and maintainability under heavy abstraction. C optimises for transparency and minimalism under extreme constraints.

>Sometimes you don't want a language that keeps you safe. Sometimes you want one that simply gets out of your way.

D lang is a wonderful Goldilocks in this regard between C and Rust. It has D-as-better-C [1]. There's no head scratching macro, excellent meta programming, bare metal programming and fast compile time and run time [2]. The programming syntax is very intuitive with UFCS [3].

[1] Better C:

https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html

[2] Ask HN: Why do you use Rust, when D is available? (255 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23494490

[3] Function:

https://dlang.org/spec/function.html

The problem is not that {language} does or does not do or have {thing}. The problem is managers expecting the work product of coders who only half know the language that they are working in to be productionizable.

Forget safety. Using enums in Rust is sheer delight. The fact they can even contain associated data is the really powerful. That alone makes me love the language. Especially with bitfields.

It cannot be matched in in C, even with a lot of macro magic. Plus, C is way too lax with type strictness and enums.

I think this is weirdly resonated with me. I used moved to Rust from C for embedded programming, and realized that my whole paradigm shifted on how I write programs.

Rust is much more than safe(r) C, it is different approach of architecting apps to have safer relations between components. Now that I am looking at my old code, I see how it would benefit from this paradigm.

And it also a 'problem' with Rust - it requires one to think differently. You can write Rusty code in C, and indeed results are just better, but trying to write Rust in C style would lead to fighting compiler and suffering.

Other languages, like Zig or Go, they chose different approach - to decorate C with modern features, and that works too.