> You can only use one non-const reference to an object per scope. This solves the aliasing issue? More accurately, if you have a mutable reference you cannot

> You can only use one non-const reference to an object per scope. This solves the aliasing issue? More accurately, if you have a mutable reference you cannot have any other references. > Rust only supports plain C (FFI) interfaces? Is that right? Yes, but with bindgen you have a decent C++ interface. My contention is that the "better interface" is only slightly better, and probably not enough to justify basically creating a whole new language. Note that for your safe RustyCPP code, the regular-C++ code will be completely unsafe to use and you'll have to write some safety wrappers that encode in the guarantees you need. I've been doing this in the Rust integration in Firefox, and I'm sure that a dialect of C++ that uses Rust's rules will need to do something similar. That's where the bulk of the integration cost comes from. > If you choose Rust, you're committed to one strategy I mean, you can just blindly use Rc<T> or Gc<T> in Rust (Gc<T> only exists as a POC right now but we plan to get a good one up some day). But yeah, magical pervasive GC would be hard to do in Rust. > The question is, is it worth it? You're arguing between choosing Rust vs CPP-with-static-analysis. I'm arguing between choosing Rust vs CPP-with-Rust-esque-static-analysis. I think the latter strongly points towards Rust, but the former has interesting tradeoffs. > I mean doesn't Rust have a reputation of being clunky anyway? Not ... really? It has a reputation for having a steep initial learning curve. > it seems like the simple Rust examples I've seen so far would have a corresponding C++ implementation Oh, this would work. But the reverse -- taking C++ code and making it work under the Rust rules -- is very hard. Not because of the aliasing rules, but because of how copy/move constructors are used in C++ (Rust's model strongly depends on initialization being necessary), the whole duck-typed-templates thing in C++, and similar things with respect to coding patterns that don't translate well. Again, you could build a safety system on C++ that respects these patterns, but it would not be the same as taking Rust's rules and enforcing them on C++.