Rust can be cumbersome when you don't want to worry about structure and design beforehand, yes. But for writing reliable software, I think it's actually the other way around - I prefer having warnings about `unwrap()` over hunting down a missing null check or typo in a variable name.

"Rust is pretty hard to write" is an opinion.

FWIW, I happen to have the opposite opinion. I find Rust easier to write than, say, Ruby or JS, because it is statically typed, has enums and great pattern matching, and traits are great.

Practical as there is already a lot of software written (or rewritten) to Rust. Sometimes for safety, sometimes - purely for performance. I don't claim it is an easy language or a universal solution.

Compare and contrast with pure languages that are less versatile. Sure, Haskell has its practical uses. From a popular example - Pandoc. Yet, I know many programmers who have been preaching it is the best language but could not write a performant program that solves a given task that does not focus on algorithmics.

By contrast, PHP or early JavaScript were not pure by any sane standard. Yet, they conquered the web. (Fortunately, ES6 and TypeScript made the JavaScript environment much saner.)

It has multiple safety-release-valves, programmable builds and full blown procedural macros. It's very practical. What it is is "unwieldy", as in, annoying to use.