I haven't been writing C for anywhere as long as you have, but I have definitely spent quite a bit of time printf() debugging and digging through corefiles in G

I haven't been writing C for anywhere as long as you have, but I have definitely spent quite a bit of time printf() debugging and digging through corefiles in GDB. I also have never had to deal with compiler bugs, but that could be because IOS-XR uses a stable/old compiler toolchain. I could be wrong, but I would wager that you are definitely an outlier among C and C++ developers. For the remaining majority, I believe that the compile-time memory safety guarantees that Rust provides are huge. As to why your experience is different, it could be that you're simply (1) a talented programmer, (2) work with talented programmers, or (3) don't work on a large and complex legacy codebase, or some combination of the above.