> Cyclic data structures require an Arena or Rc<Refcell<>>.

Is there a way of creating a cyclic data structure that doesn't involve these types?

I ask because I used the latter recently, after struggling to create lifetimes that were acceptable to the compiler. I only found it when I searched for 'cyclic data structures rust' on Google.

It would have been much nicer if the compiler could have noticed that I was trying to create a cyclic data structure and then have informed me on the different ways of doing so. Perhaps a misunderstanding on my behalf, but the error messages that I previously received felt like they were sending me on a wild goose chase.

I still don't think writing Rust code is hard, but there are definitely improvements which could be made to the compiler error messages.