i know that per.lindgren teaches embedded rust at Luleå university in sweden.

i believe rust would be a perfectly good start into the more "hard core" programming languages (e.g. start with python because you anyway need it for math & physics courses (they just abandoned matlab for python, i doubt they're ready for the jump to julia yet 😅) and use it to teach the basics (variables, functions, data types, etc.) and then from there go into rust). i think it makes you a better programmer if you know rust, as the compiler teaches you some (memory) safety principles. after that i think it's easier to pick up C & C++ and at the same time avoid some pitfalls there.

most C/C++ code out there is IMHO pretty horrible (well, so is any other code, including my own at some point 😅) as most of it was written in C++03 idioms and is not using "modern" C++ features (C++11 started turning things around a bit, now with C++20 & C++23 it suddenly looks a bit like rust - you got `std::optional<T>` (equivalent to `Option<T>`), `std::expected<O,E>` (equivalent to `Result<O,E>`), etc., just minus the memory safety guarantees 🤷) and from university lectures i've seen (both where i study and online from all kinds of universities) they're still mostly stuck on C++03 paradigms.

i also believe that universities shouldn't just teach what companies are using today but also what they need tomorrow, because companies also hire graduates to get fresh ideas. otherwise we'd all still be writing COBOL & PL/I (fun fact: i used the latter for a while on an IBM z/OS mainframe 😄)

(background info: while i'm currently studying i've also been a software engineer/architect for a long time now and am not particularly overwhelmed by the quality of university degrees i've seen in countless interviews (also for senior positions and from very prestigious universities) - there are nice exceptions, but overall i see little added value in those titles over e.g. a good apprenticeship. my own studies very much confirm my impression)

anyway, this deviated a bit from the "i'd like to see more public support for embedded rust by big companies which use it" i was going for initially. sorry for my ramblings (if you even made it this far in reading 😝)