Except when you need to build from source; you'll need yet another whole compiler toolchain that may or may not behave well on a specific environment - eg, do y

Except when you need to build from source; you'll need yet another whole compiler toolchain that may or may not behave well on a specific environment - eg, do you kow how well rust (or other "modern" language) works in late-nineties mips systems? The c compiler is the lowest common denominator.