Short answer: It is difficult because you aren't familiar with it, and your brain is still wired for memory-unsafe or GCed languages. But it is actually easier to read than most other languages when you understand it and how to navigate it.
When I first started learning Rust several years ago, I shared your viewpoint. With a heavy preference for C++ syntax, I thought Rust looked atrocious.
Then I learned it. I got good with it. I got comfortable with it. I switched from VS Code based IDEs to vim, then to IDEs with vim bindings (trying Zed now). Now, Rust reads like a dream -- aside from lifetime specifiers, which I think could be much smarter than they are now.
Anyway, it has superior pattern matching and code searching. snake_case is easier to navigate than camelCase or PascalCase. Keywords are short and easily recognizable. Branching logic is much, much easier to follow. Error handling is explicit and also easier to follow (and I started out really missing try-catch). Code gen with macros eliminates a lot of headaches. A 1st class package manager that is fast & can be easily inspected, that seamlessly integrates into the code...the list goes on.
The point is, it is a paradigm shift that doesn't hide much of anything away. When you consider there is no GC and you are in full control of memory, that there are strict syntax and styling rules that make the global Rust codebase universally accessible, once you switch to it you find yourself wishing everything was written in Rust. That is why people using it want to rewrite everything, even well established packages. A Rust-only codebase is buttery smooth.
In general, I find Rust very readable. The areas I do find I struggle are generics and lifetimes, and I don't think it's a feature of Rust syntax that makes me struggle and is instead the fact that people tend to use non-descriptive names for lifetimes or generics. It's hard to pick apart a trait that has four generics name T, U, V, and W, or lifetimes 'a, 'b, and 'c.
Usually people will try to make it the first letter of something meaningful, but it is still much harder to parse.
My own preference is to use more descriptive names except in trivial cases. Having the lifetime mirror a struct member name or a parameter name is really helpful for understanding them, in my opinion.
Yeah, I think it's non-obvious that you can name a lifetime 'frame not 'f - yes the compiler won't know you named it that because it's only supposed to live for one frame, but that's also true for your variable named timeout, Rust can see it's a Duration, so it has appropriate affordances, but it can't know you meant to call set_timeout(timeout) and not just store it somewhere.
I have a backlog item to find Rust docs which use a concise lifetime name but could value a better one, however there aren't actually that many cases other than the scoped threads which do indeed name the scopes 'scope and 'env showing that we can give these meaningful names.
When I first started learning Rust several years ago, I shared your viewpoint. With a heavy preference for C++ syntax, I thought Rust looked atrocious.
Then I learned it. I got good with it. I got comfortable with it. I switched from VS Code based IDEs to vim, then to IDEs with vim bindings (trying Zed now). Now, Rust reads like a dream -- aside from lifetime specifiers, which I think could be much smarter than they are now.
Anyway, it has superior pattern matching and code searching. snake_case is easier to navigate than camelCase or PascalCase. Keywords are short and easily recognizable. Branching logic is much, much easier to follow. Error handling is explicit and also easier to follow (and I started out really missing try-catch). Code gen with macros eliminates a lot of headaches. A 1st class package manager that is fast & can be easily inspected, that seamlessly integrates into the code...the list goes on.
The point is, it is a paradigm shift that doesn't hide much of anything away. When you consider there is no GC and you are in full control of memory, that there are strict syntax and styling rules that make the global Rust codebase universally accessible, once you switch to it you find yourself wishing everything was written in Rust. That is why people using it want to rewrite everything, even well established packages. A Rust-only codebase is buttery smooth.