Your note taking app doesn't need AI, but it also doesn't need OLE, which represented an equally hot buzzword ("software componentry") of the 90s that Microsoft was trying to shoehorn into everything.

Every generation has its hype cycle; it's nothing new.

jcranmer is correct and pointer provenance-related issues are not "boxed and contained". Start here: https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2020/12/14/provenance.html

My recollection is that Brian Anderson, who came from the C# world, was an early advocate of the easily-googlable error codes that Microsoft compilers use a lot, and pushed to get them in. That was a good call. (In general Brian had a lot of behind-the-scenes positive influence on Rust: my favorite brson-ism is "if the code doesn't have a test it doesn't exist".)

When I was first developing early versions of rustc I was really fascinated with Clang's effort at good error messages, which was helping it gain traction vs. GCC at the time, and I tried to start the Rust compiler project off on the right foot. I'm really glad that the Rust compiler dev community has continued to value great error messages: they're the UX of a compiler, and are every bit as important as UX of any other app.

The modal urbanist who lives in the suburbs is usually just someone who wants to be able to have the lifestyle they want without a commute to work. Someone who works at Google in Mountain View but would prefer not to have to drive everywhere, for example. Or, in your example, someone who works at the Pentagon but doesn't want to have to commute from Maryland (or D.C.) in order to live in a walkable area.