I can't comment on Zig and Rust, but C is one of the languages in which LLMs are best, in my opinion. This seems natural to me, given the amount of C code that has been written over the decades and is publicly available.
I built PDS, a standalone server for probabilistic data structures in Go. In-memory, uses Redis's RESP protocol, supports HyperLogLog, Bloom Filters, Count-Min Sketch, and Top-K.
I've always been hesitant about that book, mainly because I've never been a fan of books about creativity. But you're not the first person to suggest it to me so I might read it.