[generic_user]

All languages have design flaws. Thats why people keep making new languages. Arguing that Rust does not have design flaws is going to arouse more skepticism then anything else.

It is not mandated that you 'must' write safe code but that you 'can' write safe code. So there really is no fundamental assurance that rust and its libraries are in fact 'safe' by Rusts own definition in any meaningful sense.

You could make the same style argument that C is a 'safe' memory language also as long as you use automatic memory management and no malloc. Of course that would be a rather disingenuous claim to make.

[stouset]

Nobody's arguing that Rust doesn't have design flaws.

That said, people also need to understand that many such instances are not design flaw, but are instead design tradeoffs. The OP indicated that having to switch to unsafe Rust to represent a cyclic datastructure is a design flaw. My response is that it's a tradeoff that pays dividends in every other piece of code.

Can Rust improve upon the number of problems that can be solved with safe vs. unsafe Rust? Absolutely! Is it worth cordoning off a few cases that don't technically need unsafe behavior, to ensure all other Rust code performs safely? Emphatically yes.

[bjz_]

> All languages have design flaws. Thats why people keep making new languages. Arguing that Rust does not have design flaws is going to arouse more skepticism then anything else.

As somebody who has used Rust since late 2012, I completely agree. It seems that most of the more sweeping claims come from those new and excited users - hopefully over time this will soften and become more reasonable. Hype is definitely something that needs to be kept in check though, as it more than often results in a back-fire.