I think it really depends on the context. There are a few things that one should consider when thinking about "how quickly a developer can become proficient in

I think it really depends on the context. There are a few things that one should consider when thinking about "how quickly a developer can become proficient in Rust": 1. Exposure into lower level languages. If Rust is your first language with pointers it will be probably harder to grasp than for a C++ programmer. Notice the author mentions he mainly worked with Python, PHP and JavaScript/Typescript. 2. The context of learning. When I was learning Rust I didn't have a lot of free time and I was dealing with burnout and other personal problems, so my story was kind of similar: "used it on and off for a year or two". I would write something one week and leave it for a month or a few months. You don't exactly know how the post author was learning. I was working on a Rust project with a dev that hasn't written a single line of Rust before and they were productive after 2-3 weeks of full time work. 3. When the learning was taking place. Rust now is much easier to learn than it was a few years ago. It doesn't mean that the language changed significantly, cause after async/await I don't think there were any major changes, but it's been gradually improved to make it easier to write Rust code by removing cases where you need to explicitly handle lifetimes and improving error messaging and the ecosystem. A lot of well known companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Cloudflare, Dropbox, Figma, Discord) are adopting Rust and if what you're saying was true, it wouldn't be the case. Also, take a look at similar threads about C++. Lots of people would tell you it also takes years to become proficient in C++. I guess C++ has to be a dead language no one uses then.