Piotr Sarnacki wrote a blog post on July 28, 2026 that examines criticism of Rust’s memory safety claims. The article notes that the discussion is not focused on Rust developers. Traditional systems languages such as C, C++, and Zig rely on programmers to prevent memory errors, while Rust uses compile‑time checks and an unsafe keyword to allow low‑level operations.

Fil‑C adds memory safety to C and C++ code by using garbage collection and a tracking system called InvisiCaps. Programs compiled with Fil‑C panic on out‑of‑bounds or use‑after‑free accesses. The approach changes the binary interface, making it incompatible with non‑Fil‑C builds, and can slow execution in some cases.

The author of Fil‑C has expressed dislike for Rust, arguing that Rust permits unsafe operations that undermine its guarantees. Zig’s creator, Andrew Kelley, announced a compilation mode inspired by Fil‑C that claims to provide true memory safety, unlike Rust.

Some commentators assert that Rust supporters should adopt Fil‑C or abandon Rust, claiming it is safer. The author notes that Fil‑C’s trade‑offs—ABI incompatibility, performance overhead, and garbage collection—limit its applicability to certain projects.

Sarnacki cites Android’s roughly 5 million lines of Rust code, which contained one memory‑safety issue that was fixed before release. This yields a vulnerability density of about 0.2 per million lines, compared with an estimated 1,000 per million lines for C and C++ code.

He argues that Rust reduces memory‑safety risk by more than a thousandfold and that developers should choose the language that best fits project constraints, rather than adopt an absolutist stance. Using Rust alongside other languages remains acceptable.