[dragonwriter]

> but in regards to your second point, I don't feel like Rust has actually avoided creating "a separate syntax"

It avoids creating a separate syntax from the usual return-type declaration syntax for declaring the existence of errors, when compared to checked exceptions.

It also avoids creating a separate syntax for error handling, compared to (checked or unchecked) exceptions (pattern matching is ubiquitous in Rust for other purposes).

> It's created a different, more complex syntax which must be adopted inline in your actual normal code path, obfuscating what your code is actually expected to do under non-error conditions.

Pattern matching isn't an additional syntax (indeed, many languages with exceptions also have it), and it (IMO) does less to obscure non-error code than the visual noise of handling errors with try/catch.

It is more visual noise in the case of functions that do the equivalent of not handling exceptions, compared to exception-using langauges where that is implicit.