How could something to implement a pointer be more straightforward than a pointer? People seem to like Rust in excessive, sometimes botheringly excessive proportions.
I don't think the indexing strategy is more straightforward in general. It's a thing you have to learn, and the fact that you have to learn it is part of Rust's famously steep learning curve. That said, there are some common cases where you might wish you'd used indexes instead of pointers in other languages too:
- Working with resizeable collections like std::vector in any non-GC language, where resizing invalidates pointers.
- Serialization. If your objects contain indexes to each other, it's easy to turn them into e.g. JSON. But if they contain pointers to each other, it's tricky.
- Working with resizeable collections like std::vector in any non-GC language, where resizing invalidates pointers.
- Serialization. If your objects contain indexes to each other, it's easy to turn them into e.g. JSON. But if they contain pointers to each other, it's tricky.