1. Developers balked at being required to take on the cognitive load required to allow GC-less memory management
2. Developers wore their ability to take on that cognitive load as a badge of honor, despite it not being in their best interest
I eventually came to the decision to stop developing in Rust, despite its popularity. It is really cool that its creators pulled it off. It was quite an achievement, given how different it was when it came out. I think that if I had to implement a critical library I would consider using Rust for it, but as a general programming language I want something that allows me to focus my mental facilities on the complexities of the actual problem domain, and I felt that it was too often too difficult to do that with Rust.
Zig where I used to use C/Rust (but admittedly I spent the least time here).
Go where I used to use Java.
Bun/Node for typescript/javascript, where each is appropriate, but I favor Bun for standalone application programming and local scripting.