I think there's a lot love for the borrowchecker because a lot of people in the Rust community are working on ecosystems (eg https://github.com/linebender https

I think there's a lot love for the borrowchecker because a lot of people in the Rust community are working on ecosystems (eg https://github.com/linebender https://github.com/linebender) which means they are building up an api over many years. In that case having a very restrictive language is really great, because it kinda defines the shape the api can have at the language level, meaning that familiarity with Rust also means quick familiarity with your api. In that sense it doesn't matter if the restrictions are "arbitrary" or useful. The other end of the spectrum is something like gamedev: you write code that pretty explicitly has an end-date, and the actual shape of the program can change drastically during development (because it's a creative thing) so you very much don't want to slowly build up rigidity over time.