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Almost none of it is unique to Rust, but it does draw inspiration from a wide variety of influences, so it can feel like that for sure.

This syntax was taken from OCaml.

Incidentally, nobody really loves it, but nobody could come up with anything clearly better either.

In most cases you don't need to specify lifetimes. The compiler is smart enough to infer it for a lot of cases. As noted elsewhere by Steve, it's not even required for this signature.

I also used to feel the same way. But listening to [0]Crust of Rust: Lifetime Annotations by Jon Gjengset helped me understand its need.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAl-9HwD858 really helped me understand it.

If that's your main complaint, then good for Rust!