I think this is a legit sort of reasoning, but in an interesting way it's something where OCaml could fill the gap. It has its ergonomics issues, but I think the issues are basically the same/worse in Rust (except I guess Rust's macro system is better).
I say this as a Rust enjoyer, but I take the pain because I _really_ want what I'm working on to be fast.
I like OCaml a lot as a language, but the tooling is very, very poor by modern standards. Poor enough that I think it’s a total blocker on wider adoption.
OCaml is definitely something I'd consider using if I didn't already live and breathe Rust :)
I use Rust often for things that aren't possible in other languages, so I also use it for things that are possible in other languages. (Though I used Python for a production and an art project recently -- with uv it's quite nice.)
I say this as a Rust enjoyer, but I take the pain because I _really_ want what I'm working on to be fast.