You are not reading it wrong, and your statements are accurate. My broader point is that the possibility of there being a "technically better" construct was si

You are not reading it wrong, and your statements are accurate. My broader point is that the possibility of there being a "technically better" construct was simply not in scope for Rust. In order for Rust to capture Javascript programmers, async/await was the only construct that could possibly be considered. And, to be fair, it worked. Rust's growth has been almost completely on the back of network services programming.