Sounds like it should be possible to wrap it all into some kind of library and set of guidelines. On a positive side you probably could have much more confidence in Java code, because lots of boring and hard to debug memory errors just not possible (but may be C professionals don't do those errors?).
The cost of environment not making it possible for you to make a mistake is always there, somewhere.
I think best hypothetical development environment would allow you to specify the tradeoff and choose whether you want strong typing, fully managed memory or ownership semantics.
