This is my (possibly a bit too) long form blog-post/survey on the current limitations of the Rust borrow checker and mutability system as I perceive them.
It might be a bit too detail-oriented for non-Rust specific audience, but as Rust is gaining traction fast and in the same time there is the perception that it's strict/unforgiving, this list of the "limitations" and workarounds might be an interesting read for some.
This post lets me understand Rust's quirks much better than all the documentation explaining what Rust can do. Something as detailed like that should be added as a section/FAQ to the Rust Book.
I intented it to read as something FAQ-like, but as it contains some information that is likely to be outdated soon-ish, I don't think it's suitable for the official docs as-is.
I'd love to see some similar kind of effort in documenting common struggles and workarounds in the offical docs though! I think that many people are having similar kind of struggles, and explaining properly and thoroughly "why X is hard to do with current Rust" might help some light bulbs go off.
I like the positivity of the introduction - this is stuff we can't do now, but maybe the borrow checker can be enhanced to allow more scenarios in the future.
Especially as the first few are all slated to have solutions or partial solutions land in 1.31! NLL is something I'm very excited about, personally.
It might be a bit too detail-oriented for non-Rust specific audience, but as Rust is gaining traction fast and in the same time there is the perception that it's strict/unforgiving, this list of the "limitations" and workarounds might be an interesting read for some.