Reading between the lines, the author is a Haskell fan. Haskell is another "complicated" language, but the complexity feels much different than the C++ complexity. Perhaps I would describe it as "complexity that improves expressiveness". If you like Haskell for its expressiveness but dislike C++ for it's complexity, I suspect Rust is a language you're going to like.
My impression was the opposite. I wondered how well the author knew Haskell. They mention:
(1) The "intimidating syntax". Hey, you do not even need to be using <$> never mind the rest of those operators. Perl and Haskell can be baroque, but stay away from that part of the language until it is useful.
(2) "Changes are not localized". I'm not sure what this means. Haskell's use of functions is very similar to other languages. I would instead suggest referring to the difficulty of predicting the (time|space) complexity due to the default lazy evaluation.
FTA:
> In contrast, Haskell is not a simple language. The non-simplicity is at play both in the language itself, as evidenced by its intimidating syntax, but also in the source code artifacts written in it. Changes are not localized, the entire Haskell program is one whole — a giant equation that will spit out the answer you want, unlike a C program which is asked to plod there step by step.
> (1) The "intimidating syntax". Hey, you do not even need to be using <$> never mind the rest of those operators. Perl and Haskell can be baroque, but stay away from that part of the language until it is useful.
But you have to be able to read and understand code using them.
