Yep, you're not alone in wanting tighter control over memory allocation and GC. It's something that we're planning to work on this year.
Of course borrow checker would be helpful, but I guess that's too hard to implement, that's why something like this would be a good balance.
I also think Julia would benefit a lot from a list of "we want these but haven't had time for them". People like contributing things they know are desired, and with Julia it's hard to know whether people want or will accept something until you make the PR.