I agree that automatic, deterministic resource management (as opposed to GC plus a dispose pattern of some kind) is highly desirable. But I think for the vast majority of projects, I would prefer automatic reference counting with the occasional weak reference to break cycles, particularly if that were the default for the language. I can appreciate that being explicit about resource ownership is an advantage in situations where one needs to absolutely minimize performance overhead. But for most applications, I think a system of ownership and borrowing like Rust's would just add extra cognitive load for the programmer for no appreciable gain. Of course, Rust isn't a language for most applications AFAIK; it's a systems language for performance-critical infrastructure like Servo. And Rust is probably not a language for blub programmers. But I think this blog post is absolutely right about the problems with GC plus a system for disposing of resources. It sucks that mainstream, blub-friendly language have mostly chosen GC over reference counting; I think automatic reference counting provides the right set of trade-offs for most applications.