I'm starting to think that maybe #golang, and not #rustlang, is for me. I really appreciate the philosophy that the language shall be small and simple.

Is there any "standard" subset of Rust that is kind of accepted by the community? I.e. if I basically want C with borrow checking and Rust compatible syntax?

At work, I'm struggling with the complexity and over-engineering that #cpp invites, and I want to move away from that. Unfortunately, Rust also seems to encourage that kind of practice. 

 Maybe take a look at zig?  

 Yeah I was going to say the same, I haven’t tried it and don’t know much about it, but apparently it’s compatible with C like a drop in replacement or something.