Systems programming does not preclude a language from having a good type system or higher level abstractions.<p>A good example is Phil&#x27;s OS. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;os.phil-opp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;os.phil-opp.com&#x2F;</a>. He&#x27;s designing an operating system in Rust, and it has surprisingly few &quot;unsafe&quot; parts. The rest of it is made safe using some neat zero-cost abstractions.<p>Higher kinded types isn&#x27;t going to happen anytime soon. It&#x27;s something that crops up often in discussions when people want to model something complicated with the type system; but it&#x27;s a very nontrivial feature that would probably need to wait for Rust 2.0, if ever. Even if it would exist, you can just not use it. Like most of the other features being added.