Yeah, I've given a lot of thought to ideas similar to your last paragraph, but all my attempts ended up having worse usability than just using arrays and indice

Yeah, I've given a lot of thought to ideas similar to your last paragraph, but all my attempts ended up having worse usability than just using arrays and indices. I eventually gave up and decided to stop worrying and love the indices. :) I should note that one nice thing about the ECS style is that it's built around threading around Systems, which consist of references to the various Components. So it's a natural fit for the borrow checker.