Have you tried modern C++ before switching to rust? Or were you already using it and it didn't provide all the necessary features?
I am all for modern C++, and although I like Rust, C++ is more useful for my line of work.
However, it doesn't matter how much modern we make C++, if you don't fully control your codebase, there is always going to exist that code snippet written in C style.
Does it have a borrow checker?
In the form of static analysis, lifetime checker.
So no?
Depends, not on the language, that is correct.
However I always have static analysers enabled on my builds, so it is almost as if they were part of the language. Regardless if we are talking about Java, C# or C++.
Just like most people that are serious about Rust have clippy always enabled, yet it does stuff that ins't part of Rust language spec.
The domain I'm working in might be non-representative, but for me fixing my shit systematically means switching from C++ to Rust. The problems the borrow checker addresses come up all time either in the form of security bugs (because humans are not good enough for manual memory management without a lot of help) or in the form of bad performance (because of reference counting or superfluous copies to avoid manual memory management).
But otherwise I agree with you that if we never put in the effort to polish our current tools, we'll only ever get the next 80%-ready solution out of the hype train.