I've addressed the "bulging muscle" criticism many times before. Suffice it to say that it has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with a cultural difference between untyped and typed generics. C++ and D use untyped generics, while pretty much every other language in existence, Rust included, uses typed ones. It's a tradeoff, and I think Rust made the right choice. In fact, Rust chose "clarity" and "usability" over the expressive power of C++ and D templates!