> Anyone willing to accept an efficiency loss is already using an interpreted language and doesn’t have this class of problems.

Linux already takes several of these "efficiency loss" choices in C. The insistence that "actually I never make this mistake" has to be the surest sign that you're not talking to a real engineer across our whole industry. I associate it most with Bjarne Stroustrup, a man who has written a lot of books and papers but no notable software since his "cfront" C++ transpiler decades ago.

And besides all that, WUFFS isn't even taking an "efficiency loss" - remember it isn't emitting bounds checks it just checks that you proved you don't have bounds misses.