alt Hacker NewsWho, exactly?
It has been known for decades that GC was one way to achieve memory safety. That was one of the main selling point of Java back in the 90s - no more segfaults.
Rust was an absolute breakthrough, because it provides a second way to gain memory safety, this time without the significant drawbacks of a garbage collector, bringing memory safety to systems programming. That's materially different.
The only other previous attempt at this was Ada, which for a variety of reasons never quite fit the bill despite its obvious strengths.
> Who, exactly?
I'm on your side of this, but there are Rust zealots out there and they're incredibly annoying.
(Edit to add:)
As a longtime Java guy (after a decade or so as a C++ guy) what drew me to Rust wasn't actually memory safety; that was table-stakes for me and Go might have lured me in if that was all I wanted. The low-cost (cognitive complexity is a cost) of memory safety was a factor, but it was the expressive type system that sealed the deal.