[tomr75]

the hardest part and barrier are the concepts behind lifetimes/ownership/borrowing not the syntax

[scotty79]

I think the hard part is understanding how limited is basic feature set of just Rust.

That you can write very few interesting programs without venturing into the heap with Box, Rc and such and into internal mutability with Cell and RefCell.

Then it quickly raises to the power of other languages and surpasses them with "pay for only what you use" mentality.