The example presented in this post is neither a great example of what Rust can do nor an elegant solution to the particular problem of dealing with dates and times.

For a much further-reaching solution to this problem look at C++ user-defined literals, combined with what Bjarne Stroustrup calls "type rich programming".

now() + 3days + 21s + 102ms

This is not to say that c++ is the only language that can do this (although it does do it very well).

See the following video for a simple overview (apologies for toe-curling introduction): http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/GoingNative-2012...

...also the video above is worth watching just for the vector vs. list comparison.