If you avoid async, it's fairly easy to learn. (I never managed to learn C or C++.) While you're learning, take shortcuts; e.g. use .clone() and/or .to_string(

If you avoid async, it's fairly easy to learn. (I never managed to learn C or C++.) While you're learning, take shortcuts; e.g. use .clone() and/or .to_string() liberally to avoid values going out of scope. When you want to speed up code you can do the opposite. Egui is a great well-rounded immediate mode GUI library that you can use to get up and running fast. The Rust implementation of SDL2 is pretty good too. There are plenty of examples online you can borrow from.