I'm not sure where you're getting the "goal post shifting" from. Writing "p.plus(n)" in their Rust code is not materially different from what "p + n" would be i

I'm not sure where you're getting the "goal post shifting" from. Writing "p.plus(n)" in their Rust code is not materially different from what "p + n" would be in C/C++ code. That the former is nominally safe code doesn't change the fact that the same unsafe Rust code gets inlined at every callsite. You could do the same in C++ by creating an Address class (similar to smart pointers) with restricted operations; these operations would not magically become safer just because they're inlined by the compiler rather than spelled out in the code.