[ryani]

> I feel that the things that Rust is trying to do were solved long ago under FP

I don't think this is true at all. Statically analyzed Sync/Send are an amazing tool that I don't see in any other language. In fact, your point of view w.r.t. the actor model is extremely well-supported in Rust, due to Sync/Send traits. Immutable objects can be shared between threads using simple pointers, and mutable objects can have ownership moved between threads with just a pointer copy.

Those threads may have 'shared memory' in the strict sense of the term. But compared to other languages, Rust makes working with shared memory 'feel' like working with independent processes, except with extremely efficient message passing. The language statically guards against threads interacting directly as long as you don't use primitives like Mutex<T>.