Having to fight the compiler over reasonable code that the compiler doesn't like will happen with any type system, you don't need one with lifetimes to have that. The question is of course where to draw the line (where the drawbacks outweigh). I really like how you opting out of the guarantees, e.g. to initialize a doubly linked pointer you might just drop to unsafe because you can overview the memory safety implications of those two lines, but not the whole program.

How effective (and thus popular) Rust will be for creating large systems on tight deadlines remains to be seen I suppose - if it isn't competitive with C++ in that respect, then I'd consider that a failure. And a surprise.