I argue to the contrary that it's quite disappointing to see features developed without referencing previous work. The annoying "Actually, so-and-so" is really just a symptom of the general lack of citations.

Maybe it's possible to design a language de novo without being aware of previous designs in the space, as Zig seems to be doing, but it seems quite dangerous - one wrong step and you've locked in a bad design. Whereas using proven designs (as Rust claims to be doing in their FAQ) is at least making use of some form of validation.