Can Rust replace C? This is a question that has been on my mind for many years, as I created and now am tech lead for upb, a C library for Protocol Buffers. There is an understandable push to bring memory safety to all parts of the software stack, and this would suggest a port of upb to Rust. While I love the premise of Rust, I have long been skeptical that a port of upb to Rust could preserve the performance and code size characteristics that I and others have fought so hard to optimize. In f...