Maybe I missed something, but all of these network drivers in Go, Rust, C# etc are just re-implementations of the original C driver, where it would seem to me that the real work happened.

That would make the ports still be an interesting experiment, but not as impressive IMO.

I think it depends. Writing a non-trivial language port is an interesting way to show off a language. Though it also tends to be an ugly way to show off a language. It depends on the ugliness of implementation for a given language. Early in C# I saw some really ugly implementations of crypto from other languages, for example. Often pretty obvious the person porting didn't understand the new language well.

Some things hard in one language are easy in another, and it usually helps to have a good understanding of both. Just my own POV. However, low level code often requires one to do things "the hard way" for performance reasons. I particularly appreciate what Go, Rust, C# and others bring to the table.

Most of the code I write isn't particularly performance intensive, so I tend to reach for JS in early implementations. Though happy to rewrite if/when performance becomes a concern. I really enjoy articles like this.