I think every developer should learn enough C to "get by" and at least to be able to read and reason about C code given there's so much of it out there, especia

I think every developer should learn enough C to "get by" and at least to be able to read and reason about C code given there's so much of it out there, especially in the embedded world. But do you have to spend 5 years grinding out only C code? No. Spend some time with C and learn the basics, do some experiments, and then learn Rust concurrently. It's not like you have to pick one or the other. You can be proficient with C while still becoming more fluent with Rust over time.