I'd argue that your parent is right. In the superficial sense, of learn the syntax and can spit out code.
That said code in C++ would just vomit cryptic messages about templates and SEGFAULT nearly all the time.
What I'm trying to say skill floor - minimum skill/time needed to learn something to do it however in Rust is higher than C++. Although not in the sense of you must be this smart to enter, but you need this much time to learn it. If I can learn it, and I'm a mediocre programmer it's not an issue of skill.
That said skill ceiling - skill needed to do it efficiently and without error is much higher in C++ than in Rust.
Speaking as someone for whom programming is only ancillary to my job and who previously use python as my primary language, I wouldn't touch C/C++ with a 10-foot pole simply because I don't trust my own abilities to not screw it up and don't have the time to put into learning them to a level where I know I'm not.
Things that Rust does that makes things easy for me as a less-experienced non-systems programmer:
- very good documentation and compiler errors
- cargo makes dependency management and distribution a breeze (big plus over python)
- footguns are easily recognizable and avoided (unsafe)
- strong typing allows me to express more invariants in the type system which makes my code easier to reason about (another big plus over python)
The borrow checker can be an impediment at times and I'm probably leaving some performance at the door by generally avoiding references in data structures. I've found that this is less of a problem over time. It can also be way more verbose. But I have way more confidence that things will work at the end of the day, which makes it worthwhile for me, even if on the surface it is take longer and be harder to write than python.
That said code in C++ would just vomit cryptic messages about templates and SEGFAULT nearly all the time.
What I'm trying to say skill floor - minimum skill/time needed to learn something to do it however in Rust is higher than C++. Although not in the sense of you must be this smart to enter, but you need this much time to learn it. If I can learn it, and I'm a mediocre programmer it's not an issue of skill.
That said skill ceiling - skill needed to do it efficiently and without error is much higher in C++ than in Rust.