Yup, I'm used to being on the other end of the scale where you're working a fixed device so renting more VMs isn't even an option. That's when you need to start taking some of this stuff more seriously.

I agree on all points, writing correct data oriented code is hard. I've got some hope for Rust though, a lot of the common patterns lend well to the pain points you enumerate(slices, pointer chasing, OO inheritance mess, ownership, etc).