I've never understood people's abhorrence of sigils. They are useful shorthand for very specific concepts. It's like hating apostrophes in English. You can do away with them entirely, but I don't think most people would consider that an improvement.

Now, the greater density of concepts shorthand notation can be abused, and too much of that often shifts the cost benefit ratio further to the cost side for all but the most expert in the language, but that's a problem of too much, not on inherent with their use at all.

I don't personally think any of them should go away. I just note that many newcomers to the language feel they're opaque. Having written a good bit of rust now I do sometimes find the sigils impact readability (especially in macro_rules).