> In both Go and Rust, allocating an object on the heap is as easy as returning a pointer to a struct from a function.

I can't figure out what the author is envisioning here for Rust.

Maybe, they actually think if they make a pointer to some local variable and then return the pointer, that's somehow allocating heap? It isn't, that local variable was on the stack and so when you return it's gone, invalidating your pointer - but Rust is OK with the existence of invalid pointers, after all safe Rust can't dereference any pointers, and unsafe Rust declares the programmer has taken care to ensure any pointers being dereferenced are valid (which this pointer to a long dead variable is not)

[If you run a new enough Rust I believe Clippy now warns that this is a bad idea, because it's not illegal to do this, but it's almost certainly not what you actually meant]

Or maybe in their mind, Box<Goose> is "a pointer to a struct" and so somehow a function call Box::new(some_goose) is "implicit" allocation, whereas the function they called in Zig to allocate memory for a Goose was explicit ?