I didn't understand why rust and go are natural alternatives to C. Wouldn't C++ be a more natural option? (Despite the fact that both go and rust are developed by third party companies)
My experiences getting things to compile across gcc and visual c++, dealing with strings (especially Microsoft's WCHAR), reliable integer sizes (pre stdint.h), and debugging templates were not things I would wish on anyone.
Re-doing some of my side projects in Go and Rust was a lot more enjoyable. I could focus on what I was doing instead of trying to work around deficiencies in the language and its libraries.
Doesn't sound like C++.
Rust and Go, in various different ways (and to various degrees), make it actually safe.
Oh well, at least they're moving from C, which will be a big win either way.