Rust definitely has its opinions and its chosen complexities. I'd point to the way global allocators are used by default (opinionated) and the way trait coheren

Rust definitely has its opinions and its chosen complexities. I'd point to the way global allocators are used by default (opinionated) and the way trait coherence rules work (opinionated and kind of complicated). That said, I think a lot of the complexity of Rust is actually fallout from a relatively small number of design choices: - programs ought to be UB-free by default, and overriding those defaults should be rare - mutation is allowed, including shared mutation across threads - runtime assumptions similar to C and C++, i.e. no garbage collector, and a useful subset of the lanugage doesn't require heap allocation Given those requirements (in short, a "safe systems programming language"), I think you very quickly find yourself needing 1) lifetimes, 2) the no-mutable-aliasing rule, and 3) move semantics. Those things contribute a lot of the "feel" of Rust, and probably the majority of the difficult learning curve. But I think it's interesting to consider that "the type system should deal with lifetimes" isn't really a baked-in opinion that Rust has, as much as it is the necessary complexity stemming from the other opinions above.