I wonder how much of it is low-level experienced developers only ever using C fail to see that C is not the universally best tool (or, 'if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail' question).
I wonder how much of it is low-level experienced developers only ever using C fail to see that C is not the universally best tool (or, 'if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail' question).
I'd say that's it. From my own experience with software developers, convincing some of them to learn something new is practically impossible.
If the person in question has a true passion for the craft, you can regardless of the age/seniority of the developer (at least in my experience). In fact, learning something like a new programing language is a big undertaking and if your work doesn't offer incentives/rewards the will has to come from the person him/herself and so that's why the passion bit I mentioned above.
In my experience I also notice that more senior/older devs are more reluctant to learn new things, but I am unsure if that's due having their passion destroyed by many years of bullshit companies politics, pointless meetings/trainings, and adherence to the latest flavor of agile development every quarter or simply an age thing (I'm not there yet and so I can't tell first hand).
Sounds like a way to replace yourself by 2 low pay students who also have 1 year of Rust experience.
The more you know the better software engineer you are with everything else being equal (IMHO).
Also, if you need to gradually add rust to an existing codebase the C knowledge is extremely valuable.
Edit: My point with the replacement is not that juniors don't/won't have C on their CV but that a manager would be more willing to replace an experienced dev with 1 year exp in the current tool with 2 worse devs also with 1 year exp in the current tool compared to replacing an experienced dev with say 10 years of experience in the current tool with 2 worse devs with 1 year experience in the current tool.