> Yet in software engineering, this is exactly what has been happening every day for more than a decade.

Not really. Rust is the first major attempt to achieve c/c++ performance & capability while also being safe.

Prior to that nearly every memory safe language came with crippling tradeoffs, and that is why people rejected them. Especially as performance and efficiency took center stage again with the massive increase in battery powered devices & the general plateau of single core CPU performance over the last decade