I'm not sure why C is blamed in this case when you can do exactly the same strong typing fix in C, and with C99 struct literals it's also not much worse to work with:

    typedef struct { size_t size; } PhysicalSize;
    typedef struct { size_t size; } AllocatedSize;

    PhysicalSize psize = { 123 }; // or { .size = 123 }
    AllocatedSize asize = { 234 };

    psize = asize; // error

...and in reverse, Rust wouldn't protect you from that exact same bug if the programmer decided to use usize like in the original C code.

IME overly strong typing is a double-edged sword though, on one hand it makes the code more robust, but on the other hand also more 'change resistant'.

I still would like to see a strong typedef variant in C so that the struct wrapping wouldn't be needed, e.g.:

https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n3320.htm