As a Rust beginner that likes to learn the hard way I think I have some insights why Rust seems cumbersome and/or hard for programmers trying it.

Rust uses syntax that feels familiar but means completely different things than in pretty much any other language.

For example '=' doesn't mean assign handle or copy. It by default means move.

'let' doesn't mean create a name for something. It means create physical space for something (of known size) that can be moved into or moved out of.

You don't deal with objects and values of primitive types. Instead everything in Rust is a value. When you move, you move the value. If you compare, you compare by value. If you pass something from variable into function, you move the value into the function.

And when the space where you keep the value goes out of scope value dies with it if it wasn't moved out to somewhere else.

Scope for variables (which are just named spaces for values) ends with the end of the block, but some values, created by functions and returned from them, if they are not moved into any named space, can die sooner, even in the middle of the line where they were acquired from function call.

Everything else stems from that fixed size moved value semantics. If you don't want to move the value into the function when you call it you need to pass something else instead, so you create and pass in the borrow. But you have to ensure that the value doesn't die or get moved anywhere (even inside the container you borrowed from) before borrows to it all die.

Because of this you are better off with borrows that are short lived and local. Often it's better to keep the index of an element of a Vec instead of the borrow of this element. If you must create types that contain borrows you must know that they become borrows themselves and you need to treat them exactly the same trying to limit their scope and life time.

It's hard when you come from any other language because borrows are superficialy similar to pointers or references to objects. So you try to use them as such. And crash into the compiler because they are not that. What's worse their syntax is very minimalistic which triggers intuition that they must be fast and optimal solution for many problems which they sure can be once you fully internalize their limitations but not a moment sooner.

Another thing is that values in Rust must have the fixed size. So even as simple thing as a string requires a bit of hackery. Basically in Rust the default strategy to have something of variable size is to allocate it on the heap and treat pointer to it (possibly with some other fixed sized data like length) as the fixed sized value you can move around clone and borrow.

So if you want to have semantics you know from other languages you can't just use basic Rust syntax.

You need constructs such as Box and Rc, Cell, RefCell. Make your things clonable and sometimes even copyable and avoid creating borrows whenever possible initially. When you do it Rust becomes as flexible as any other language and you can use it pretty much just as comfortably. Then the value semantics shines as you can very easily compare your data by value, order it, create operators for it, create has for it so you can keep it in HashMaps and HashSets. Then it's delightful.

My advice is when you create a long lived type just wrap it in Rc and treat this Rc as your 'object'. And avoid borrows in your types unless you have a very good performance (measured) reason to have them or you are creating something obviously dependant and usually short lived like an iterator.