Cargo makes it so simple to add tons of dependencies that it is really hard not to do it. But that does not stop here: even if I try to be careful with adding dependencies, a couple dependencies are likely to pull tens of transitive dependencies each.
"Then don't depend on them", you say. Sure, but that means I won't write my project, because I won't write those things from scratch. I could probably audit the dependency (if it wasn't pulling 50 packages itself), but I can't reasonably write it myself.
It is different with C++: I can often find dependencies that don't pull tens of transitive dependencies in C++. Maybe because it's harder to add dependencies, maybe because the ecosystem is more mature, I don't know.
But it feels like the philosophy in Rust is to pull many small packages, so it doesn't seem like it will change. And that's a pity, because I like Rust-the-language better than C++-the-language. It just feels like I trade "it's not memory-safe" for "you have to pull tons of random code from the Internet".