Is this before or after leafing through their book? Because I think there are at least two stages of not-understanding Rust. One is before taking a look at the book and docs in which you can't make any sense of it at all. Another one is after scanning the book and trying some of the examples in which you really start to understand how you can't make any sense of it at all.
Curious, is it harder for c++ programmers to learn Rust than dev from higher level devs? Because ive seen Rust has a lot more success recruiting devs from python, js, even php.
There are two main communities in C++, those that embrace safety and take advantage of the language features to improve their productivity, while going down to lower level constructs if performance needs an extra push.
Then there are those that are kind of exiled C developers using a C++ compiler, forced to migrate to C++ on their work, trying to use it as C with C++ compiler.
That maybe it. Perhaps the first camp is more comfortable and familiar with the "ocaml'ness" of Rust, while for the second (C devs) camp the concepts are alien.