[vitriol83]

I don't think that one can necessarily equate systems programming with manual memory management (see e.g. Go). It's true that manual memory management will (probably) be more efficient and more predictable, but ultimately depends on how important that is in your application.

[scott_s]

I agree that systems programming does not necessarily imply manual memory management. But I think a modern language with manual memory management is necessarily a systems programming language - and if it's not, it made a mistake. Regardless, Rust was designed for systems programming where manual memory management matters.

[Narishma]

Go is not a systems programming language (as the term is usually understood), and Google labelling it that way when they first introduced it is unfortunate.

[hellofunk]

Indeed, and the author of Go himself has said that he is glad Google no longer uses that term when referring to Go, as he also doesn't believe it is one.

[vitriol83]

Citation needed. Plenty of people regard high-level languages as nonetheless suitable 'systems programming'. This is the first FAQ on golang.org! See also

https://ocaml.github.io/ocamlunix/