Although the more usual pattern here is to ditch pointers and instead have a giant array of objects referring to each other via indices into said array. But this is effectively working around the borrow checker - those indices are semantically unchecked references, and although out-of-bounds checks will prevent memory corruption, it is possible to store index to some object only for that object to be replaced with something else entirely later.
> it is possible to store index to some object only for that object to be replaced with something else entirely later.
That's what generational arenas are for, at the cost of having to check for index validity on every access. But that cost is only in comparison to "keep a pointer in a field" with no additional logic, which is bug-prone.
