That's because closely following PL theory isn't always the right goal for a language. Ergonomics and pragmatism are far more important.
Though ignoring all the PL lessons for the sake of "pragmatism" is just plain ignorance.
Rust has a quite solid theory backing. Zig has nothing interesting really: it's "vibe coded" by someone who was doing game dev or something like that.
That's because closely following PL theory isn't always the right goal for a language. Ergonomics and pragmatism are far more important.