> I couldn't teach _myself_ Rust in a week.
Autonomous teaching is supposed to be harder than with a tutor in any domain so it's not particularly surprising ;).
> But you do need to acknowledge that there is a definite learning curve
I don't like the “learning curve” phrase for Rust, because the curve itself is actually fine.
But before you can even enter the learning curve there's a significant step to cross. It's not particularly difficult, but it's all about theory and concepts. It's like high-school level trigonometry, it's not particularly hard, but it's still something a bit dry and that needs motivation to learn.
With a teacher and assignments, most people can do it, but without it you really need to make the effort of understanding the core concept (Ownership, borrowing, Send and Sync, + heap and stack if you don't know about it before hands + what are threads, data race and locks[1]) before you can even start to get to the fun part of learning a new language.
> and the average Job Coder (works from 9-5 and doesn't think about it on their free time) isn't cut out for Rust.
Without an external motivation source, the average developer has no reason to have the motivation to cross this learning step.
But as part of my job, I've thought Rust to average Joe in a week and they became productive quickly. I'm sure I could teach you Rust in a week ;).
[1]: the deadlock empire is an excellent learning resource for that one.