This is not true. Case and point- Java. Many times simpler than Rust, and large codebases are as horrible as C++ ones.
1. NullPointerException. I get some object with a bunch of fields and I don’t know which of them are null. In Rust I am given a struct, and usually the fields aren’t an Option unless they need to be.
2. Complicated design patterns with inheritance. Maybe it’s more of a problem with the culture/ecosystem than Java the language. But Rust doesn’t have inheritance, and traits are less complicated. So you rarely get the same smells.
Compared to C++, Java is easier to debug, but I still have a lot of “wtf” moments trying to understand what the author was thinking. It is almost like the language is so simple to write, people are making the program more complicated on purpose just to make it interesting.
Working at a company with lots of systems written by former employees running in production… the advantages of Rust become starkly obvious. If it’s C++, I walk on eggshells. I have to become a Jedi master of the codebase before I can make any meaningful change, lest I become responsible for some disaster. If it’s Rust, I can just do stuff and I’ve never broken anything. Unit tests of business logic are all the QA I need. Other than that, if it compiles it works.