If there's one problem with rust, it's that it expects you to know how to use it.

One of my first projects was to try and use the SDL2 crate to make something, and I got stuck wrangling the borrow checker about how long my textures live.

I try again a year later, now knowing intuitively how the lifetime system works, and I come up with a solution easily.

This sort of thing is probably very discouraging to new users of the language

...every tool expects you to know how to use it...

Disclaimer: I'm not a Game Dev and that knowledgeable about Rust.

It can certainly be discouraging but reading up on SDL2, it's in itself a reasonably complex (to the point it would be hard to grasp even in languages like C/C++).

I agree with @RememberMe on the fact that every technology tools expect you to know how to use them. Of course, there are exceptions which are meant to be easy to pick up (Rust isn't one of them).
Rust is notorious for its high learning curve and the fact it's quite low level.

Starting learning Rust to do some fairly complex things like using a 3D graphics library and complaining it's hard makes me wonder if you even thought that through.
Even in languages like Python, no one expect those who just learnt it to be able to use Pygame, Codeskulptor and whatnot.

One of the differences of Rust compared to other languages is that you really must know how to walk first before you start running.

In other languages you can just botch something together until it works. But note that this program is likely to be full of errors, simply because it allows it and you don't know any better.

So yeah, the learning curve steepness is there, but it's used for safety and correctness.

@Geoxion Couldn't have said it better