> Folks really ought to read the C/C++ literature to understand why Rust evolved in a unique direction. That gives better compare/contrast.

Unfortunately the C/C++ literature is dense and not at all approachable. The Rust literature is much, much better for newcomers to systems programming (partly because it doesn't have to cover a load of weird failure cases that simply don't exist in Rust).

> one _cannot_ just arbitrarily “go” from a higher level language to a systems language.

I mean, it's like learning anything new. You have to do a bit of unlearning, and grasp the core concepts. I don't think there is anything especially difficult about systems languages. I had a background of JavaScript and PHP, and I was able to pick up Rust well enough to use it in my day job in a couple of weeks.