Re: Real programmers
What utter nonsense. Programmers then were the same as programmers now; some good, some bad, some lucky and some clumsy.
C was designed to solve a set of problems that had no other easy solution in the early 1970's. It was easy to learn and easy to use and you could get something working quickly so it became popular.
Rust was designed to solve problems that didn't exist in the 1970's. It is not as easy to learn or use as C and it takes a little longer to get something working, so it will never be as popular as C, but if the problems it solves are ones that concern you, then it will repay the extra effort required to learn to use it well.
Personally, I find I can solve most of the problems that matter to me most easily using Python, but when the occasion demands, I will and have used most other languages