I'm not an extremist, the language clearly has certain advantages. At the same time I do believe it could have a lot more users if it were a more pleasant experience.

If it becomes a mainstream language (like Java, C++, etc), I'd be happy to concede I was wrong. It could be that memory safety will trump ergonomics and it wouldn't be the first time that somewhat painful to use tools become very popular - see Linux, git, etc.