RefCell is a shared pointer. Arc is a shared pointer with atomic reference counting (so it can be used between threads safely). Both these constructs use the

RefCell is a shared pointer. Arc is a shared pointer with atomic reference counting (so it can be used between threads safely). Both these constructs use the "clone" trait to iterate the reference count. I make primarily concurrent and async applications these days so I use Arc a lot for accessing memory that is very large and shared many places, such as context. I think the real problem is Rust has a lot of rules (that make sense for safety) that take time to understand and most people aren't patient enough to make good software because of corporate conditioning.