Memory management is difficult, extremely difficult, to get correct in the way rust does. I don't think I've seen a leak or bad dereference in years. The only way it really manages this is by tying references into what amounts to a proof assistant. Every simpler method of which I can think either sacrifices capability (e.g. no references at all; only raii + copy on write) or it becomes a GC with all its wonderful trade offs.

GC isn't terrible, though. Azul has struck an amazing balance between latency and eagerness—even if you can't afford it the technology does exist. If you don't have latency, memory restrictions, or embedding requirements, rust may be overkill.