> Another thing I've found is that because of the type inference it often gets really confusing whether a variable is a reference or not. Doesn't help that code completion basically doesn't work at all at the moment.

Out of interest what setup are you using? My editor is telling me whether a variable is a reference or not so maybe this is just a plugin you don’t have? I’m currently using Rust Enhanced (with RLS), I believe VSCode shows you this information too.