pcwalton's problem is that he doesn't distinguish between different levels of memory safety. It might be "deeply problematic" for a language aiming for wide use

pcwalton's problem is that he doesn't distinguish between different levels of memory safety. It might be "deeply problematic" for a language aiming for wide use in 2022 not to be make some significant efforts toward memory safety, but it doesn't have to be Rust levels. Rust itself isn't 100% memory safe, because a lot of code has to be marked "unsafe" even when it actually is safe and then it might contain other bugs completely unrelated to the reason for the marking and those might go undetected. Similarly, languages like Java and Python are even more memory-safe than Rust, but programs written in them are hardly bug-free either. If you eliminate enough memory-safety bugs, then other classes start to dominate and should also be addressed. Rust is beyond this point, but to get there it diverted resources from addressing other kinds of bugs and has also made some severe usability/productivity tradeoffs. Zig might or might not be at that point, but it certainly promises to get there and to do so without the same drawbacks. Ultimately the question is which language lets you write more bug-free code per month. A reasonable argument could be made that it's Rust and a reasonable argument could be made that it's Zig. Only time will tell, but only if both continue to exist and evolve, which pcwalton and others seem unwilling to let happen. What's "deeply problematic" is their belief that Rust's goals and approaches represent The One Right Way and no others can be allowed to exist.