Rust ownership works because it runs entirely at compile time. Rust has infrastructure for runtime inference counting, but you need to actively use it, and it's

Rust ownership works because it runs entirely at compile time. Rust has infrastructure for runtime inference counting, but you need to actively use it, and it's complicated. Also, every time you read a pointer you are creating a new reference. That's what turns "every read into a write". You are correct that it's not actually every read, it's just that every small block that reads the value will also write over it.