I see Rust as neither a C nor C++ replacement, it feels more like a much less limited version of Java. Zig, on the other hand, feels more like a highly evolved

I see Rust as neither a C nor C++ replacement, it feels more like a much less limited version of Java. Zig, on the other hand, feels more like a highly evolved C. As a pretty hardcore systems programmer, there are three things that modern C++ has first-class support for that are difficult to live without: metaprogramming, handling cases where ownership is unknowable at compile-time, handling cases where lifetimes are unknowable at compile-time. Rust is still significantly more limited than C++ in what it can express effectively. There are very few features in C++ that are not critical and routinely used in some application domain. A low-key strength of C++ is that it is not overfitted to any particular assumptions about application domain. This adds complexity (aside from complexity introduced by legacy and age) but with the benefit that there is a subset of C++ that is highly specialized for the requirements of almost any application domain.