I'm sorry you found Rust hard, but it really is a world apart from Perl. I started learning programming using assembly (Motorola 68k), and then went a different professional route (via Java and Javascript).

Rust to me is back to basics. There is a stack, and there is a heap. Many languages mask this from you, but notably C/C++ doesn't, and although it's a notch up in complexity from Perl, the control you get over these aspects lets you write code that is equivalent to C/C++ in performance. Something Perl/Go can do for you under some scenarios, but mostly not.

Granted, not everyone needs/wants to understand or work closer to the system.