I know Rust has RC pointers. But I'm guessing a Rust programmer would still have to understand ownership and borrowing, since the standard library and third-party libraries use those concepts.

I think what I'd really like is something like C# and the .NET base class library, but AOT compiled to native code and using automatic reference counting, with some way to indicate weak references. I know that neither GC nor reference counting quite reaches the level of "don't make me think" when it comes to resource management, but given a choice between explicit resource disposal and the occasional weak reference annotation, I think I'd choose the latter.

Anyway, enough ranting from me for now.