You always need to know what you're doing, but Rust lets you encode more of what you mean in the code and the compiler checks that you're not violating your own

You always need to know what you're doing, but Rust lets you encode more of what you mean in the code and the compiler checks that you're not violating your own invariants. That's the killer feature for me. I feel like I'm working with the compiler, not against it. Sometimes I feel like C's compiler is almost adversarial, going out of its way to find small mistakes in my code and have them blow in my face at runtime instead of notifying me. I understand why it works that way of course, but usually when my Rust code compiles, it works. I can't say as much for my C code, despite nearly 20 years of practice. I do share some of your frustrations with the DTB thing, I'm not a fan of it either, although something like that was needed and I'm sure any alternative would have its haters.