As someone coming from C I find the stdlib is fine. It has all the datastructures you need for the vast majority of code. It doesn't have very domain specific things like the kind of structures a text editor might use, for instance. That's fine.

As for the quality of crates, yes, this is the case in any language. Using a library includes the responsibility of making sure the quality is up to scratch. This is not unique to Rust.

> Why make it harder.

To achieve static memory safety.

If you don’t need or want that, you’re probably better off sticking to other languages. Although hopefully, not something like C or C++ which the US government now advises against using for security reasons.