I don't think this is fair. There is definitely some unforced error, but a lot of the complexity is shared with other languages in it's heritage eg the trait sy

I don't think this is fair. There is definitely some unforced error, but a lot of the complexity is shared with other languages in it's heritage eg the trait system is no more complicated than haskell's typeclasses, and haskell also has macro systems on top of that. Also the simplicity in zig comes from a major innovation in controlled partial evaluation, which we've yet to really explore the consequences of. Rust had already made a major innovation in the form of the lifetime system. It needed to figure out all the implications of that so it made sense to draw from existing designs where possible for the rest of the language rather than piling on more new and untested ideas.