I like a lot things about Rust. But on the downside it's syntax feels a little too much like C for comfort. Working with pointers to this extent has never been

I like a lot things about Rust. But on the downside it's syntax feels a little too much like C for comfort. Working with pointers to this extent has never been my idea of productive programming. In addition the whole Box, Rc and Arc business feels almost like a kludge. Are they part of the language or just some add on? The syntax makes it feel very much like the later.