A programming language is a medium to communicate programs to something that can execute them. That isn't exactly the same thing as a tool. A tool in my book is a metaphor for a program that helps achieve some well-defined task. Even if we ignore this difference, we would still want to talk about tool safety.

In my experience there is a C++ mob that hates Rust. These are the people who declare statement of facts as ideology. No good faith dialogue is possible.

There are also competent C++ programmers who misunderstand or don't know how static checking works.

I also witness normal people who are completely surprised by a statement like "C++ is all unsafe" and find that too strong. Using the word "safe" with a technical meaning throws normal people off because, sadly, not everyone who writes code is an academic PL researcher.

"Safe", in Rust and much PL research, means "statically checked by the compiler to be free of UB". If you are pedantic, you need to add "... under the assumption that the programmer checked all conditions for the code that is marked `unsafe`" for Rust. That is all there is to it. Scientific definition.

C++ in its current form is full of gross design mistakes, many of which could be corrected at the price of breaking backwards compatibility. Mistakes happen, aldo to world leading PL researcher (the ML language and polymorphic references) which is why the field embraced mechanically checked proofs. The difference is the willingness to address mistakes.

Academics use "safe" in exactly the meaning the Rust community uses. If you don't understand this, go and educate yourself. Academics need to communicate effectively which leads to technical meanings for everyday words or made up words and jargon.

Maybe a statically checked safe low-level language is marketing genius. It is also a technical breakthrough building on decades of academic research, and took a lot of effort.

Bjarne and friends chose a different direction. Safety was not a design goal originally but doubling down on this direction means that C++ is not going to improve. These are all facts.

Backwards compatibility is a constraint. Constraints don't give anyone license to stop people who don't have those constraints.

We don't have to feel any moral obligation to use statically checked languages for programs. But claiming that static checking does not make a difference is ignorant, and attaching value to one's ignorance certainly seems like an indicator for ideology and delusion.