Tyler Mandry, lead of Rust's language team, presented at RustConf 2026 on the "Beyond the &" project, which aims to make user-defined smart pointers as flexible as built-in references. After extensive work throughout 2026, the proposed design seeks to simplify the mental model of how pointers and references work in Rust.
Background
Rust's ownership and borrowing system has long been noted as having a steep learning curve, particularly around the distinction between built-in references and smart pointers like Arc and Box.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Oct 8, 2026 at 05:04 PM
- Score
- 7.0 / 10