One would never return “*” to signal an error in rust code (or any language with an option type).

If your goal is to convince people that you're right, describing things as "time wasted on navel-gazing" is not the type of thing that will win people over. It comes across as arrogant and entitled, as if the world would be better if everyone would just recognize you're smarter and therefore should do whatever you want.

If you're just pissed and trying to blow off steam, maybe this choice of words will help a bit, but because of the issues described above, it also might just cause a bunch of people to react negatively towards you and therefore make your mood worse.

If you're just commenting here as something to reference in the future for when you expect to say "I told you so!" to everyone, I guess this is a reasonable way of doing it. It still doesn't really seem like there's much need for phrasing it like that though; people still might look back and think that you're right but still sound arrogant and entitled.

I can’t stress this enough: there are—rightfully—a whole bunch of people that simply do not want to work on C codebases, because in the typical case, working wIth C sucks. Your outbursts are never going to change this, no matter how petulant or vitriolic. Amazing how a group of people has made “[aversion to{ languages with far fewer footguns” into some sort of culture war issue. Sorry that the industry is forcing you to read a book or whatever.