That's a fairly accurate idea of it. Some folks complain about Rust's syntax looking too complex, but I've found that the most significant differences between Rust and C/C++ syntax are all related to that metadata (variable types, return types, lifetimes) and that it's not only useful for the compiler, but helps me to understand what sort of data libraries and functions expect and return without having to read through the entire library or function to figure that out myself. Which obviously makes code reuse easier and faster. And similarly allows me to reason much more easily about my own code.