>If the language has the problem that people are fighting with the language in order to become productive with it, perhaps something is wrong with the language, and not the programmers?

If they stop fighting after they learn, then no, it's not a problem with the language. It's the very definition of learning.

Now, the language might be harder to learn than others, and that might be a problem in itself.

But not just because people have to struggle at first "in order to become productive with it". That's true for any language that brings anything new to the table.

>The argument of pass by reference, or borrowing is that it’s more performant than cloning by default. In general, computers are getting faster, but systems are getting more complex.

Rust was not created to piggyback on "computers getting faster".

It was created to be as fast as possible.