There aren't really simple data structures that involve pointers. Pointers are just hard (where hard means they require programmers to hold state in their head)

There aren't really simple data structures that involve pointers. Pointers are just hard (where hard means they require programmers to hold state in their head), and rust makes that explicit. The reality is that implementing data structures that require pointers is not a typical task, and they're ideally provided by the stdlib or crates.