Why the insult? Memory safety without a hit in performance seems like a great thing, and this is a fine example that it's becoming possible. The point is not

Why the insult? Memory safety without a hit in performance seems like a great thing, and this is a fine example that it's becoming possible. The point is not that C is always fine. In this case, I think the actual conclusion is something like: C and Rust perform equally here, both have about 50% of the theoretical assembly performance on modern processors, thus better vectorization would help both of them. But if all else is equal, choose the safe one.