In an abstract sense, it's possible to offer more functionality without requiring much more friction. This is the premise of languages with good type inference,

In an abstract sense, it's possible to offer more functionality without requiring much more friction. This is the premise of languages with good type inference, relative to earlier versions of C++/Java. Though there might be more friction at some points, I imagine the Rust developers are taking these examples as good benchmarks for improvements. EDIT: This exercise is very similar to the frustration when starting to use Haskell. A lot of "simple" things feel more difficult because of the functional purity. But then you discover more patterns or libraries that help to handle this. Design patterns surely exist for Rust that have yet to be discovered, but will turn out to properly encapsulate a lot of the difficulty (when combined with language improvements)