Exceptions in BPF

I'd argue that rust borrow checks and panics are conceptually very similar to bpf verification and exceptions. In both cases, you are attempting to eliminate certain classes of failures before running the program, and providing a mechanism to assert invariants and cleanly handle bugs.

The difference is primarily scope: as a general purpose language, rust's borrow checker is weaker than bpf's verification (with a few escape hatches provided as well), and its use of asserts/panics more extensive.