Sorry, but it's honestly just a lot of our journeys. Started on scripting languages like PHP/Ruby/Lua (self-taught) or Java/VB/C#/Python (collage) and then slowly expanded to other languages as we realized we were being held back by our own tools. Each new language/relationship makes you kick yourself for putting up with things so long.
I understand that but there's a time and a place. Rust has nothing to do with this. 100% of the people on this site understand that this challenge can be done faster in C, or Rust, or whatever. This is a PHP challenge. Perhaps we could discuss the actual submission as opposed to immediately derailing it.
I don't know about that... I like Rust a lot... but I also like a lot of things about C# or TS/JS... I'll still reach for TS first (Deno) for most things, including shell scripting.