[gary17the]

> got completely thwarted by the borrow checker

IMvHO, Rust Ownership and Lifetime rules aren't really that hard to learn. The only trick is that a programmer cannot learn Rust exclusively by trial-and-error (which programmers love to do), trying dozens of syntax combinations to see what works. A programmer is forced to learn Rust by RTFM (which programmers hate to do), in order to understand how Rust works. That's all there's to it. It's like trying to learn to play the guitar without reading a book on guitar cords, pulling guitar strings individually at random - the music just won't happen for quite a long time, unless you're Mozart. At any rate, one can always forget Rust references (i.e., raw pointers) and use Rust reference-counted smart pointers[1], effectively writing Rust analogously to Swift.

[1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch15-04-rc.html

[bryanlarsen]

Rust has fabulous error messages, so I do a lot of programming by trial and error.

[smodo]

True, but because there are many ways to satisfy the borrow checker it is very easy to arrive at needlessly complicated solutions. Idiomatic solutions on the other hand aren’t always obvious.

[melagonster]

maybe this is because Rust have new mind model, most of mind models can be used in most of language, first time is harder.