[burntsushi]

> Rust's ownership problem solves it for trivial cases, at the cost of making it hard to do other things

Your analysis of the trade offs is fine, but you claim that Rust only solves this problem for "trivial" cases. If that's true, then most of the Rust code I've written is trivial. To me, that pretty thoroughly weakens your dismissal here, at least in my case.

[rbehrends]

I am talking about just using basic references & borrowing. Once you introduce reference counting (Rc<T> and Arc<T>) and copying, you open up a lot more options, of course, but at this point you also can't make any lifetime guarantees anymore, because objects can escape the "owner's" scope at will.

[burntsushi]

> I am talking about just using basic references & borrowing.

... yes, I know. And is presumably what you referred to as "trivial." But this in fact comprises the vast majority of Rust code I've written. So you can call it trivial if you want, but as I said, it significantly reduces the weight of your dismissal.

There's plenty of Rust code I've written that makes use of Arc/Rc, specifically for cases you've called out (global caches, structural sharing, etc.) but it's nowhere near ubiquitous. So what I'm trying to say is that your representation of the problems that Rust solves is at best misleading, as supported by my experience writing a not insignificant amount of Rust.

So in other words, sure, you can call most of my code "trivial," but on the other hand, I can say that the problems posed by you in your top-level comment are actually solved in most of my code, regardless of whether you think it's trivial or not.

[tcoff91]

Yes but that isn’t a problem because you will still be protected from all the things that rust is trying to protect you from.