As someone who's only did a couple of small toy-projects in rust I was never annoyed by the borrow checker. I find it nothing but a small mental shift and I kinda like it. What I _do_ find annoying though and I cannot wrap my head around are lifetimes. Every time I think I understand it, I end up getting it wrong.
Somehow at some point lifetimes started clicking for me. I think the key was when I understood that in a function, not everything needs the same lifetime. e.g.
struct MyRef { item: &'a i64 }
struct MyType { items: Vec }
impl MyType {
fn get_some_ref(&self, key: &usize) -> MyRef {
MyRef { item: &self.items[key] }
}
}
Then I understood that not everything needs to be tied to the same lifetime. In this example, MyRef should be tied to the MyStruct, but not to the `key`:
fn get_some_ref(&'a self, key: &usize) -> MyRef