Calling memory safety an 'ideal' is like calling back-ups an 'ideal'. You can cast it off as a "nice to have", until you get bitten in the ass by a lack of it.

To quote myself[1]: I don't get why those Rustafaris do this in the first place. Like, if you want to contribute to a piece of software written in C, then write your contributions in C. If, on the other hand, you want a Linux kernel in Rust... Then just fork it and rewrite it in Rust. It's not as if that were a new idea, is it? Heck, most days it feels like about half the top headlines here are “<Software X> rewritten in Rust!” So why don't they just do that in stead of this constant drama???

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42993961