Both those scoped enums do in fact have operator< but, as your sibling comment points out, they insist on type matching and so my example won't actually compile

Both those scoped enums do in fact have operator< but, as your sibling comment points out, they insist on type matching and so my example won't actually compile because it uses dissimilar types. The analogous Rust types implement only Eq not PartialOrd, so we can't make this error. However whether you can add or subtract them is harder to guess than you seem to have assumed https://godbolt.org/z/3vdazcr7E https://godbolt.org/z/3vdazcr7E Of course the bit pattern representation is the same in Rust. The point isn't the representation or we'd be talking about machine code. The point is the ergonomics. These types aren't (shouldn't be) integers, but in C and C++ they are anyway.