Rust

I don’t know but it could be anything else than an Arc. Obviously you should still be able to take a usual reference to such a thing.

Maybe. My point is that unless you want to, for example, have a reference that you switch between which object it references, I think you would be fine with using the ref-counted reference. With eventual optimization done via compiler when it's sure the code won't be trying to access the object after it got deleted. But even if I'm wrong, there could be another way to get a pure reference

This proposal as I understand it is an attempt at making reference-counting more ergonomic.

Yes, and IMO by using Handle for that it breaks a pattern. Rust keeps * and & for speaking about values and memory management (I want data vs I want reference). Using a trait for ref-counted referencing adds another layer. So suddenly we have *, & and ::Handle(). You see what I'm getting at?