"Make it simple" is easy to throw around, but it's almost meaningless. Perception of simplicity and readability is incredibly subjective and dependent on previo

"Make it simple" is easy to throw around, but it's almost meaningless. Perception of simplicity and readability is incredibly subjective and dependent on previous experience. Beyond that it also depends on what goals the language has, because "simple" from one point of view can be oversimplified and unclear from another POV. Rust is a systems programming language concerned with several low-level details. Programmers aren't reading Rust code for entertainment, but need to be aware of things like ownership, mutability, lifetimes, trait bounds, dynamic dispatch, and so on. Beyond being eye-pleasing, Rust also needs to be locally explicit to communicate costs, limitations, and unsafety of the code. As the article shows, beyond just bikeshedding which ASCII sequence you use for what, the aren't many ways to simplify the syntax that don't involve hiding information or changing language semantics that could worsen performance or create unpredictability.