Writing programs that compile is much easier in C. It lets me accidentally do all sorts of ill-advised things that the Rust compiler will correctly yell at me about.

I don't remember it being any easier to write C that passes through a static analyzer like Coverity etc. than it is to write Rust. Think of rustc like a built-in static analyzer that won't let you ignore it. Sometimes that means it's harder to sneak bad ideas past the compiler.