Could you give an example of how Zig is more C-like for the seasoned C developer?

Rust generally has a lot of what C has, you just might need unsafe to get it.

One notable omission is `volatile` but that sorta beside the point.

If the concern is just relearning a new STD lib and getting used to error handling with an enum instead of ints, then I suspect you could get up to speed pretty quickly.

Past that, sure the rust crate ecosystem might make use of a lot more complex bits of rust, just like C++ libraries can do wild things with templating.

If you are just comparing C, just avoid the complex stuff and write your Rust function like you write your C functions. It’ll work.