[yokohummer7]

> which for the most part seem like it wouldn't involve a ton of work

This is probably the reason why our opinions vary. I believe rewriting existing libraries to be safe would be a tremendous amount of work. This estimation comes from my experiences with Rust. Safety guarantee hugely affects the interfaces of the libraries. You cannot "just" gradually increase safety of your library. It is basically a redesign. At least with what Rust currently provides this was my experience. And the method suggested by Herb Sutter seems to be very similar to Rust's. So I expect the same churn to happen in the C++ ecosystem, and it would effectively split the ecosystem into two: safe ones and unsafe ones.

Let me rephrase myself again: if adding safety to C++ in a gradual manner was that easy, Rust would have not been invented in the first place. The Mozilla guys could just use C++. There's a reason why Rust had to exist, despite all the "reinventing the wheel".

[something123]

I guess it's a matter of opinion but I think you're wrong that you have to redesign stuff. Most of the guarantees in essence already exist b/c of best-practices (like RIIA) - they're just not guaranteed by a validating program.

Don't diminish it, b/c the presented solution is non obvious/trivial. If it was, it would have been done ages ago.

So either A - The Mozilla folks may have not thought of this solution

B - At the time of Rust's development C++ was stagnant and not evolving as it is right now. There wasn't a lot of hope for fixing it at the time. It's thanks to the work of several people that the C++ standards committee now is a fast moving organization.

If Mozilla were considering starting the Rust project in 2016 I don't think they would have gone ahead with it