I'd rather use Zig than Rust because I wouldn't have to learn about how to work with Rust's memory management model. Even though I understand Rust at a technical level, actually getting my brain to work that way has proven difficult.

Being able to directly import existing C header files is also attractive.

Having said that, I'd rather Zig had been Go-inspired than Rust-inspired. Go plus Zig's approach to generics and error handling would be nearly perfect! (Notwithstanding that Zig's error handling is basically Rust's with added syntax sugar!)