Scientists are currently writing their code in C++ in many cases. If you have needs that require the performance benefits of C++, why not do it in a language that has a cohesive design (and is actually intuitive) instead of learning the pile of layers of decades-old debt that is C++?

I question if scientists ever should have to tackle the ins and outs of software architecture and performance optimization. Never mind the daunting task of running software.

I don’t really see Rust being altogether different to someone outside the software industry. It’s yet another complex knowledge domain that can be abused and intractable like any other.

I suspect the lines are not as cleanly drawn as anyone would like them to be, no more making programming unnecessary for scientists than they make cooking unnecessary for <insert non-chef profession here>.

Hard to answer this question but I worked with scientists who were wasting an incredible amount of time debugging their badly designed fortran or c++ programs, or just hitting walls when they shouldn't.

So yes you can easily start hacking something in fortran or c++, and the cognitive load is probably much smaller, but then you have the risk of being eaten by your bugs, or of not working on some problems just because the tool you make is so badly designed you give up doing the necessary changes.