To be honest, my reasons for preferring Rust have little to do with any of this. Yes I think Rust is a nicer language, but it also does get in the way a bit more than C++.

The real reason is that C++ feels ancient and creaky. Packaging? Nope. Build system? Yeah, set it up yourself. Easy to use build tools? Erm no. Reasonable error messages with templates? Lol.

Macros and templates feel both central to the language and like hacks. Syntax is also borderline unreadable; double ampersands, lambdas all look like a cat walked across the keyboard.

I'm not hating on C++, I have many happy memories of using it, but Rust feels just so much user friendly.