I agree, I thought this was a weird example - but I'm not a Rust nor C programmer.

I assume this example is used because programmers of either language reach for asm when looking for raw performance. But to me, it's shouldn't even be a discussion point, since even I know both languages can be made to emit the same assembly.

Also, I think it side-steps the hard parts of the question - which is, what are the performance impacts of Rust safety?