Rust's Borrow Checker: More Curse Than Blessing?

Rust, lauded for its blend of speed and safety thanks to its borrow checker, faces criticism in this post. The author argues the borrow checker creates significant ergonomic problems, rejecting perfectly valid code due to overly conservative rules. Multiple examples demonstrate the unnecessary refactoring required. The post questions the overstated role of the borrow checker in Rust's safety, comparing it to garbage-collected languages like Python and Julia. While acknowledging the borrow checker's benefits in concurrent programming, the author contends its overhead in single-threaded contexts outweighs the advantages. Rust's strengths, such as its strong type system and rich standard library, are highlighted as the true reasons for its success.