Not the parent, but I think in a vacuum Rust would be pretty good at filling C++'s niche (minimal performance compromise, low-level-when-needed, high-level-sort

Not the parent, but I think in a vacuum Rust would be pretty good at filling C++'s niche (minimal performance compromise, low-level-when-needed, high-level-sort-of, native compilation, though C interop is less seamless), plus it's more expressive/beautiful (but more troublesome if you want to mutate aliased pointers), and teaches you upfront to avoid pitfalls. But Rust has less thorough library support (though Rust does have some really cool libraries), and the existing practices around separate compilation and stable ABI can't be carried to Rust. I also dislike the culture of downloading dependencies from the Internet.