I get the feeling that learning rust can be a "bang your head against it until you get an 'aha' moment" sort of affair, much like learning git.

Some people pick up rust quickly because it clicks into their brain early, some take longer or end up bouncing off.

I had university courses on computer architecture and assembly, even before I took up Python as a hobby. I did have a little C experience before that. My entire perspective on Rust type system from day 1 (back in 2013, before Rust 1.0) was based on the hardware (primarily stack frames) and problems I had with assembly and C. There was never a point where the borrow checker didn't make sense. This is why I insist that Rust isn't hard to understand if you learn the hardware on which it runs.

Back then, people were debating the design decisions that led to the borrow checker, in public for everyone to see (on Reddit and IRC). They were trying to avoid memory safety issues in Firefox and Servo. They were even a bit surprised to discover that the borrow checker solved many concurrency bugs as well.

I took a different route to Goku (other commenter), I used to write a lot of C and C++ in university, did everything there, up until 2018-ish, I got a bit into rust and things just clicked, my understanding of memory was just not that good enough, and then my C skills skyrocketed as a consequence of learning proper memory management.

Then I got into Haskell, and functional programming, that made thinking about traits, immutability, and all functional aspects a breeze.

Then finally, I got into rust again, use it at work and personal projects. Somehow I managed to rewrite a project that took me 4 months in Python in about 4 days. It was faster, more robust, cleaner, and I could sleep at night.