> who probably learned Rust the wrong way (by just trying to build stuff as if it were C/node.js and run into problems instead of slowing down + reading):

This is the right way to learn. I'm quite familiar with lifetimes and whatnot, but when I didn't bother with them much at all when learning - I just "clone"'d.

This allowed me to learn 95% of the language, and then once I did that, learn the last 5% (lifetimes).

Highly recommend.