[gpm]

One thing to note is that the claim wasn't "shallower" but "fantastic". A sufficient response to this is that it's "fantastic" because the vertical distance between "can write code that compiles and looks reasonable" to "can write code that is reasonably correct" is small. I doubt you would find many other languages where that area is so small in fact (Idris comes to mind).

I'd also argue though that while the learning curve for rust is initially steeper, it is shallower when you look at the curve up to the point where you want contributors to be. C/C++ has an insanely steep cliff to go from "can write reasonable looking code" to "can write reasonable correct code".

The first argument is in some sense better because it doesn't restrict me to talking about C/C++.