New concepts, yes, but I think anyone who has spent any significant time programming in C++ will immediately recognize the problems that they are solving and how the solution works. That significantly eases the learning curve in my opinion.
Indeed I am coming from Python (and some Go), and I'm coming to Rust because I want a language that makes me think about these things. But those who do not want to be bothered are likely to be turned off.
Okay, fair. For myself, I'm coming from extensive experience in both Python and C++, and although I'm admittedly still in the honeymoon phase, my assessment so far is that Rust is an excellent union of the two.
Basically I get the high level abstractions and package management that I expect from Python, while inheriting a set of tools that help finally realize some of the high performance, zero-copy idealism of C++ (slices, lifetimes).
C++ programmers are used to think in terms of object lifetimes, were they should be allocated, and how to signal ownership and object consumption over the API.
That's why is better to learn Rust coming from a C++ background.
(And in my experience this mental model can also be of value even in languages were memory management is handled by the language runtime)
