[pcwalton]

> all the different pointers

@ is going to sink into the library and will be deemphasized in the language to help with this. That leaves only ~ (pointers) and & (references).

> closures capturing their environment (variables outside the closure in the scope where the closure is defined)

Right, this is one of the difficult pieces. This is going away as well in favor of Java-like Runnables to make the variable capture easier to understand (with macro sugar to make them just as convenient as closures). The closures that remain will work just like the closures you know from other languages regarding variable capture, and the Rust-specific stuff regarding variable capture will be gone.

> std::Cell

Yeah, this needs to be better documented. Part of the problem is that we haven't totally nailed down what Cell will be used for yet.