[bonzini]

There were other attempts to bridge safety and performance.

C++11 already gets​ pretty close to that, but Microsoft's M# was used to write a research OS and is probably the closest.

[moomin]

C++, though, only works if you follow a bunch of coding guidelines (that I can tell you for free the last C++ team I worked on didn't) and don't interface with any library APIs that don't follow those guidelines.

Don't get me wrong, C++ is coming on by leaps and bounds, but if you want to get to safe and performant without GC, it's not the place you should be starting. (Equally, I'm not saying Rust solves all the world's problems. Just that it's a better place to start.)