False dichotomy -- there are always more than two sides to any issue. People find themselves fighting with the borrow checker because their mental model of what they're writing is not what Rust is interpreting. This is probably indicative of two things: (1) their mental model is incorrect in some ways, and (2) Rust's semantics don't map that well onto how we think about systems programming problems. If satisfying the borrow checker makes you think "whoops, that was dumb" then you're in category 1. If it makes you think "aargh, how do I express this in a way Rust will accept?!?" then you're in category 2. With an ideal language category 2 wouldn't exist.