I can confirm all of this is still the case. > I legitimately can't tell if I am an idiot and skipped some basic Rust training, or the error messages are truly

I can confirm all of this is still the case. > I legitimately can't tell if I am an idiot and skipped some basic Rust training, or the error messages are truly confusing and unproductive. It doesn't make a difference. The compiler can't assume any level of proficiency. If a topic requires you to read the docs, it should tell you so. There are some "basic" things it relies on, but for anyone with any level of experience programming should be able to read a diagnostic and either understand it outright or have enough clues about what to search for. So "this error is confusing because I didn't read chapter N of The Book" can be simplified to "this error is confusing."