&gt; Luckily you wouldn&#x27;t use anything like that to write the safe and performant data structures I&#x27;m talking about.<p>Are you talking about how you can write data structure abstractions in C++ using unsafe feature (like std::observer_ptr) that are themselves safe to use? If so, that&#x27;s exactly Rust&#x27;s model! Rust&#x27;s linked lists, for example, are written using unsafe code internally and present a safe interface.<p>&gt; I like Rust I just don&#x27;t understand how I&#x27;m wrong about this single little pro C++ has over it.<p>Because it&#x27;s not a pro that you can write unsafe code in C++ without saying &quot;unsafe&quot;!