This is less true in "how the language works", and more true in "code I have read in these languages follow these patterns". The latter I agree with, the prior

This is less true in "how the language works", and more true in "code I have read in these languages follow these patterns". The latter I agree with, the prior less so. Rust is more type heavy sure, but there are plenty of type shenanigans in rich enough C ecosystems, the kernel has plenty of vtable structures which have varying level of richness and type complexity in their own C expression. Ever worked with the addr types in the BSD sockets API - super messy types that can be a real pain for FFI for example, heavier typing exists in C - not "higher order" and so on, and yes you _can_ do that in rust, but do you want to debug it in kernel use cases, maybe not. Rust kernel code may look different in the end from a lot of other Rust code in a similar way to some C code in the kernel being quite different from other C code elsewhere.