> If you only want this functionality for rapid iteration/prototyping, which was what you originally said, then leaking memory in those circumstances is not such a problem.

There's use-cases for wanting your language to be productive outside of prototyping, such as scripting (which I explicitly mentioned earlier in this thread[1] - omission here was not intentional), and quickly setting up tools (such as long-running web services) that don't need to be fast, but should not leak memory.

"Use Rust, but turn the borrow checker off" is inadequate.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37441120