But C is not going to disappear, and the huge reams of important code written in it, like the Linux kernel proper, are not going away, too.
But C is so much simpler than Rust, it comes almost free. It does give you an appreciation what really unsafe code is, and why is it so unsafe. It also gives you a better understanding of how the machine works on the lower level.
My impression too. Very unlikely that Linux and BSD kernels will be re-written in Rust.
>Rust is arguably future-proof in its syntax.
C is primitive and painful to program in for the most part. However, it's at the core of plenty of important things, so having enough knowledge to get around it is crucial.
C is essentially a portable assembler and it's great for a number of tasks. Rust is a general-purpose programming language and it has a vastly different domain of application. Surely, they overlap, in some domains Rust is overtaking C (where C was used more out of necessity/lack of alternatives rather than consciousness). The point is, though, is that there is a domain (not necessarily very big, but very important) where C will very likely stay for a very very long time. At the same time, Rust is great, but not much critical software is written in Rust (yet). It's likely that there will be such software in the future, but I think the consensus is that nobody knows for sure.
Yes, I agree with the fact that learning C makes us appreciate Rust (and other safer languages) better. It's just that between C and Rust, I would pick Rust. I'm not a systems programmer, but I have worked with C before and as soon as I saw some of Rust's example codes, I liked how it taught me something and liked the design choices. Rust does seem like a nice language.