> You can't simultaneously argue that unsafe languages are categorically bad and also use unsafe rust as an argument against rust's limitations. Unsafe is either bad or it isn't.

I'm not arguing philosophically. I'm arguing from a safety viewpoint. A language that's 100% unsafe is worse than a language that's 1% unsafe.

Saying it's not perfectly safe is sophistry. Nothing is perfectly safe, but you still don't hand out your sensitive bank information to random person on the Internet/street/etc.

> Again, once you use unsafe Rust, why not just use an unsafe language?

Assume data race happen. Would you prefer to audit 30k lines or 3? Unsafe language is unsafe everywhere. In Rust, you can limit your search to unsafe regions.

> Static analysis tools outside of the language would also be the way you would check for UB and unsafe behavior in languages like C and Zig.

Define outside language? Miri is maintained by rust-lang team. And Clippy and so on. Sure valgrind and so forth aren't, but their checks are somewhat complementary.

> For instance, let's say I am making an HPC program for identifying pricing arbitrage in the market which generates 10 million dollars a day when it's operating. If it takes 10 days longer to implement in Rust, that cost me 100 million dollars. I am not going to care if it crashes twice a day because of an NPE I didn't catch.

Sure, but if your implementation has a data race error, that when triggered happens causing massive loss of funds. First you'll have to find the issue (good luck searching most of language and deps).
Then you need to patch it to prevent future errors. And it can happen again. So maybe 3 days here, 5 days there, 4 days there, and so on.

Granted it's a contrived example, but hey... If you want HPC and safety use Java/C#/Lisp, no Rust necessary.

Point being - Strength of Rust isn't in speed of development, so much as in avoiding certain sets of bugs. And borrow checker isn't the only tool to achieve this.

> Depending on use-case.

On that I agree. If your game is one and done (no maintenance), no user content, no MP, basically worse that can happen is crash sure go ahead. Jams are in that way perfect candidates for small langs where speed of development is crucial.

I'd argue most sold games aren't one and done.

> I don't even know what to say to this. Spaces and punctuation got accepted because they're more ergonomic and universally accepted by consensus as the better solution for making text readable.

Keep in mind that in Rome everything was written without spaces for hundreds of years. From their POV the spaces would be just unnecessary fluff. And there are still languages that have little to no spaces, so spaces aren't even universally accepted. See Chinese and Japanese.

> Most system programmers do not program in rust.

I don't understand, this wasn't specific about just systems language? Going from C# to Zig is a safety downgrade (but a possible performance uplift). And GC langs have been used in OS implementations.

> There's no consensus that it has chosen the right tradeoffs.

Sure, but consensus is a matter of current status and it's not set in stone.

Status quo is C, which has null - a trillion dollar mistake (adjusted for inflation and software spread :P)

> What's your point? Python is not the easiest code to maintain...

My point that we use Python won in ML because allowing people to achieve value isn't the only important aspect. There are many aspects. Sure you get to pick your own, but I've seen too many CVEs caused by memory unsafety.

But safety and reducing footguns should be ideals for any language to strive. Reintroducing footguns? What's next? Return of GOTO Spaghetti monster.