I hope Rust gains traction as a language for targeting embedded systems. Rust has the following attractive characteristics for this particular domain:

* Minimal overhead (e.g. runtime), great for systems with very constrained resources

* More advanced language features than C (better macros, better type system, pattern matching, etc)

* Compile-time verification of safe usage of memory

* The ability to drop down into manual/unsafe mode for doing stuff like DMA or writing to configuration registers

c.f. this topic from a year and a half ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6268291

I did a bit of embedded development (MSP430, Cortex M3, PIC18) some time ago, and I can say that having a language like Rust at my disposal would have drastically improved my productivity.