[lkirkwood]

I really don't agree with this. You don't have to pay any attention to low level concepts (unless you want to) except maybe the borrow checker? Which barely counts IMO. Scope and mutability are concepts every programmer should be familiar with. Ownership is a simple principle. You definitely can use it as a systems language. But you can use it for lots of other things effectively - and that fits my definition of a general purpose language.