> Yes, it's also a systems language without a runtime. But that's not the novel part.

Low level strong correctness was absolutely a novel part. In fact it’s exactly why many people glommed onto early rust, and why it was lowered on the stack.

Although learnability and weirdness budgets were also extremely novel in low level contexts which had been subsumed by C and C++.

> horrors in C++

Yes, horrors in C++. Half baked jerry-rigged and barely usable nonsense. Not an industrial strength langage with a reliable type system and a strong focus on safety through types.