This is awesome, I'm so happy to finally hear from somebody with experience in ATS. :)

  > For example, Rust has destructors for RAII whereas ATS 
  > requires manually calling functions to clean up 
  > resources.

This especially intrigues me, as recent events have shaken my faith a little in RAII. Who knows, maybe Rust will one day regret not embracing linear types wholeheartedly...