The deal with strict Rust-style references is that they solve mutable aliasing bugs (data races, iterator invalidation, all kinds of unexpected mutation really)

The deal with strict Rust-style references is that they solve mutable aliasing bugs (data races, iterator invalidation, all kinds of unexpected mutation really). That's the deal with Rust. The whole "memory management" thing is mostly a historical accident. We could have a "smaller Rust" that auto-boxes values, has a runtime that handles reference cycles for you, and doesn't guarantee anything about the stack vs heap: https://without.boats/blog/notes-on-a-smaller-rust/ https://without.boats/blog/notes-on-a-smaller-rust/