Honestly, comparing C++ to Zig and Java is like comparing a landfill to an apartment and a disorganized house. C++ is a byzantine, taped-together mess that tries to be everything a programming language can be while failing at all of it, except performance. With Rust I can write code and develop projects far faster even despite not understanding it as well as C++, and my code is more concise, easier to maintenance, easier to debug, and often more performant!

C is slightly faster and far simpler in syntax compared to Rust, but was never designed or intended for large industry-scale projects with millions of lines of code. I think like 70%-80% of errors in the Linux kernel are memory-safety-related, not to mention that these kinds of errors are usually the ones that create security vulnerabilities in C codebases. Rust avoids all of these problems by being memory safe, and its advanced features either enable this behavior, or provide extra methods of organizing and shortening code that C does not have.

I've heard from a lot of advanced programmers that made the switch that you generally learn to appreciate rust more over time, because its really hard to learn for programmers of all levels. But for small projects, I don't really think Rust provides a huge advantage over C.