Regions as a general concept go back at least to FX-87 (in 1987 :). But the way the Rust type system works is quite different from Cyclone, for example. Cyclone

Regions as a general concept go back at least to FX-87 (in 1987 :). But the way the Rust type system works is quite different from Cyclone, for example. Cyclone, for example, treats memory in the heap quite differently than Rust, and doesn't have borrowing (at least not obviously). But my more significant point is the second one, which is that novel language design is research, period.