Yes.
replyThe biggest innovation of Rust is bringing some of the good ideas from functional programming to low level programming. I'd also say that partially exposing data flow analysis to a proframmer is new.
Rust package management is quite good, and also not by any means an invention.
I am still not a fan of all the ugly macro programming systems and verbose syntax in the language.
Macros in Rust are really ergonomically terrible. Zig's approach here is way better.
replyThe language I really want is somewhere inbetween those two languages.
The borrow checker in Rust is frankly novel. Cyclone had something somewhat similar, but not the same.
replyThe broader ML-like type system in Rust is not novel, but the integration of the borrow checker -- and its move semantics more broadly -- with it in its form honestly is an innovation. And one I'd have a hard time living without at this point.