In general I view the borrow checker as a good friend looking over my shoulder so I don't shoot myself in the foot in production. 99 times out of 100 when the borrow checker complains it's because I did something stupid/wrong. 0.99 times out of 100 I think the borrow checker is wrong when I am in fact wrong.
0.01 times out of 100 the borrow checker fumbles on a design pattern it maybe shouldn't so I change my design. Usually my life is way better for changing the design after anyways.
The thing is, you don't need to have refs of refs of refs of refs of refs. You can clone once in a while or even use a smart pointer. You'll find in 99.99% of cases the performance is still great compared to a GC language. That's a common issue for certain types of people learning how to write Rust. I can't think of any application that needs everything to be a reference all the time in Rust.
As far as "mandatory" goes for choosing a language. We can all use ASM, or C, write everything from scratch. It's a choice. Nothing is mandatory. No one is saying you HAVE to use Rust. Lots of people are saying "when I use it my life is way better", that's different. There was a recent post here where people say they don't use IDE's with LSP or autocomplete. A lot of people are going to grimace at that, but no one is saying they can't do that.
The thing is, you don't need to have refs of refs of refs of refs of refs. You can clone once in a while or even use a smart pointer. You'll find in 99.99% of cases the performance is still great compared to a GC language. That's a common issue for certain types of people learning how to write Rust. I can't think of any application that needs everything to be a reference all the time in Rust.
As far as "mandatory" goes for choosing a language. We can all use ASM, or C, write everything from scratch. It's a choice. Nothing is mandatory. No one is saying you HAVE to use Rust. Lots of people are saying "when I use it my life is way better", that's different. There was a recent post here where people say they don't use IDE's with LSP or autocomplete. A lot of people are going to grimace at that, but no one is saying they can't do that.