I actually don't think it's as difficult as people often suggest to write a doubly linked list in Rust (yes, I have done it and read Learning Rust by Implementing Entirely Too Many Linked Lists.). I think it's just surprising to people that something that's a CS101 data structure takes some advanced features to implement without locks.

But the thing is, you don't write C programs in Rust and you don't generally use doubly linked lists. (Linked lists turn out to be a very niche data structure that doesn't work well with modern CPUs anyway, but I digress.) You'd probably use a Vec or a BTree from the stdlib anywhere you're thinking of using a linked list.

So I don't think it's really the case that programs are significantly longer in Rust. Rust is more explicit, so you'll end up moving some things that existed as comments or documentation or just in your own head into code - that's a win that doesn't increase complexity, only exposes it. That program may look larger, but it's only because you can see it better.

It really depends on what those 10 tokens are doing. If I have a token that creates a new universe, seeds it with life, and creates the conditions for life to develop an optimal linked list - it might solve the problem in one step, but our atomic unit here is absolutely massive.

Similarly, if I compile a program to assembly I'll generally get many more tokens. But I can't really buy that I've increased the complexity of the program here.

I'm pretty satisfied with this understanding but I understand your desire for greater rigor.