A pet peeve of mine is when people say that the only thing Rust offers (compared to other main-stream languages) is memory safety (putting aside how important memory safety is..).

There are other features that I think help me write better (more reliable) code, though sometimes it can be difficult to pin-point exactly what those features are. For instance, it took me years to realize that there was a type of bug I would end up doing in C++ from time to time that completely vanished when I started using Rust, and it's thanks to pattern matching:

if let Some(ref val) = something {
  // ..
} else {
  // ..
}

Once that clicked, std::optional felt almost .. advisory.

NDC Conferences just put out a video called "Rust is not about memory safety" (I suspect there was supposed to be a "just" in there, but idk), which I think does a pretty decent job of making this point -- Rust really isn't just about memory safety. Honestly, it would be pretty surprising if a relatively modern language didn't have a bunch of other nice features.

If you're looking for someone to make the case for Rust, the language, beyond memory safety (with concrete examples!), this video is pretty good:

Keynote: Rust is not about memory safety - Helge Penne - NDC TechTown 2025

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