C++ by comparison doesn't stand in your way too much either. I feel like the biggest gripe Rust has is what happens when you do have to go unsafe. That seems to be a strong point of contention for many folks. Maybe all the reasons that lead people to use unsafe rust go away or the attitude about it shifts in some manner.

For me Rust turned out to be less interesting after I saw the whole ceremony about typing. The amount of things I had to grasp just to get a glimpse into what a library does felt much more involved than any of the things I did with C++. The whole annotation-ting feels much less necessary and more like a proper opt-in there.