I think the future is in languages that offer "opt-in" borrow checking, so you can use it where it makes sense. After all, most of a program should prefer simpl

I think the future is in languages that offer "opt-in" borrow checking, so you can use it where it makes sense. After all, most of a program should prefer simplicity over performance, and only optimize where it matters. I think this is the path towards a more Pythonic Rust. Some languages that are going this direction, including D [0] and Vale [1]. Vale's particular insight is that we can get the benefits of borrow checking with isolates (from Pony) and integrating "pure blocks" and pure functions into the type system, so to speak. > ... breaks ownership is automatically transformed in a reference counted object ... Some languages actually do this! Lobster [2] uses borrow-checker-like semantics and falls back on reference counting. And worth mentioning is HVM [3], which falls back to cloning. [0] https://dlang.org/blog/2019/07/15/ownership-and-borrowing-in-d/ https://dlang.org/blog/2019/07/15/ownership-and-borrowing-in... [1] https://verdagon.dev/blog/zero-cost-memory-safety-regions-part-1-immutable-borrowing https://verdagon.dev/blog/zero-cost-memory-safety-regions-pa... [2] https://www.strlen.com/lobster/ https://www.strlen.com/lobster/ [3] https://github.com/HigherOrderCO/HVM https://github.com/HigherOrderCO/HVM