In short: the type system is significantly more expressive and encourages domain modeling that tends to lead to fewer errors; "if the compiler says it's OK, it'

In short: the type system is significantly more expressive and encourages domain modeling that tends to lead to fewer errors; "if the compiler says it's OK, it'll be OK" isn't strictly true but it's often pretty close. Rust also offers stronger guarantees around memory safety than C, as well as C++ as commonly practiced. (Which is to say, you can write very memory-safe C++, but you will work at it.)