I mean, C++ programmers are exactly the correct audience for a language like this - there are many other options for memory safety if you can live with a garbage collector[1]. But writing safe C++ is much, much, much more complex than than writing okay-ish C++. The way I see it, Rust has basically taken a lot of the best practices required to write sane C++ (e.g. RAII) and formalized them in a way where the compiler can enforce them. That means in order to write ANY Rust code at all, you have to adapt a lot of best practices all at once. That's not very beginner friendly, and will probably lead to cognitive overload in most - you certainly don't get the same freedom you get in other languages where you can implement something in dozens of ways, because most of those ways won't compile here. So I'm not saying they shouldn't keep working on the ergonomics and learnability of the language, but I think a lot of these complexities are essential to the task of writing sane programs while dealing with raw memory, and the fact that they have been named, formalized and checked by the compiler is entirely a good thing - and if that means the programmer has to know about them, then that's ok.

[1] Sidenote - I find it really fascinating how Rust can also use the stronger static checks to prevent things like race conditions in a way few (/no?) other languages can.