No, back in the day C was used for everything. Vim was not written in C because it needed to wring every last bit of performance out of text editing.
Rewriting everything in rust "for memory-safety" is a false tradeoff given the millions of lines of C code out there and the fact that rewrites always introduce new bugs.
I almost always find that building Boehm GC as a malloc replacement (malloc() -> GC_malloc(), free() -> NOP), and then using LD_PRELOAD to get it used makes any random C/C++ program not only still work but also run faster.
Not only that, but you can then use GC_FREE_SPACE_DIVISOR to tune RAM usage vs speed to your liking on a program by program (or even instance by instance) basis, something completely impossible with malloc().
Please, I’m begging you, stop talking about Rust. You’re shoehorning Rust into a discussion where it hasn’t been mentioned, just to hate on some imaginary people you think are pushing Rust here. No one is talking about that. You sound deranged and obsessed.
The vast majority of the conversation here is about GC and the performance implications of that. Please stick to the rest of the thread.