unsafe does not disable the borrow checker. It does however give you abilities to circumvent it, namely by letting you dereference pointers, which are not subject to the borrow checker.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

You can also selectively circumvent it without dipping into unsafe, by wrapping a type in an Rc or Arc ("reference-counting" and "atomic reference-counting"). This will allow you to handle an object largely like you might expect from garbage-collected languages. (Reference-counting is not able to free circular dependencies. If you need those, then use WeakRef.)

Having said that, I would certainly not recommend constantly doing that for a beginner. It needs some time to get used to the way Rust works, especially if you're already experienced in other languages, but when it clicks, then you stop breaking your brain.

[–] ulterno 7 points 2 days ago

OIC. I really need to start learning this language soon, or I won't be able to understand future memes and rants.