But is it that make is inherently confusing or that "creating" things in general is muddied by being conceptually too crowded? There are at least 6 concepts jos

But is it that make is inherently confusing or that "creating" things in general is muddied by being conceptually too crowded? There are at least 6 concepts jostling around (make, new, zero values, special reference types, literals, pointers-to-literals). For starters, it seems like that could have have been reduced to 5 by eliminating new(T) completely and allowing the already-idiomatic &T{} to pick up the slack. I must agree with your overall praise for the language. The package/export system and the official tooling is masterfully done!