GoKawiilRust Language Team Details 'Beyond the &' Smart Pointer Redesign at RustConf 2026
At RustConf 2026, Rust language team lead Tyler Mandry presented a year-long effort called 'Beyond the &' aimed at giving user-defined smart pointers the same flexibility as built-in references. Mandry illustrated the current limitations with an example involving Rust's map-entry API and a shared cache, showing how code that works with built-in mutable references runs into borrowing restrictions with smart pointers.