If C is actually "very simple", you should be able to write a working interpreter for C in a short time, say, one week. (I would assume that you know how to write an interpreter in general, of course.) Can you?
> Does the proverbial rust programmer who doesn't know C even exist?
I have seen enough Python or JS programmers learning Rust without having any working knowledge about C. Of course Rust is not an easy language to learn for them, as they have to deal with a concept of explicit memory and lifetime that have no equivalent in Python or JS, but otherwise I didn't see any complication specific to Rust.
