I'm curious, what has given you the impression that Rust is a language "for the elite"? It certainly has some rough edges around learnability, but I don't think

I'm curious, what has given you the impression that Rust is a language "for the elite"? It certainly has some rough edges around learnability, but I don't think anyone is actively trying to discourage people from picking it up. Rust is certainly hard for experienced programmers because some common patterns in other languages are not allowed by Rust's rules, but that's no different than trying to apply OOP in a functional language.