To contradict you: avoiding false positives (programmer is correct, compilation fails anyways) by refactoring code into the second or third best design, is exactly the type of cognitive overhead that deserves to be vindicated when complained about. It can fundamentally changes the design of the entire codebase.

I believe that explains why many game developers, who have a very complex job to do by default, usually see the Rust tradeoff as not worth it. Less optionality in system design compounds the difficulty of an already difficult task.

If The Rust Compiler never produced false positives it should in theory be (ignoring syntactic/semantic flaws) damn-near as ergonomic as anything. Much, much easier said than done.

You aren't really contradicting me, I agree that Rust isn't a great language for prototyping. However, there are some solutions that help with prototyping, namely: judicious use of Clone‚ Arc, Rc, and unsafe.

In particular, if your comparison point is C and Zig and you don't care about safety you could use unsafe, knowing you are likely triggering UB, and be in mostly the same position as you would in C or Zig.