The first time I looked at rust code that wasn't in tutorial I was pretty confused. Things I thought I understood I really didn't. I knew maybe 6 programming languages including some c. A lot of people struggle to learn rust because it's an ML as in OCAML and really isn't much like C at all.
Some people adapt to it more easily, especially coming from languages like scala but it has a lot of unique characteristics that aren't in C or are even related. Like lifetimes, dynamic dispatch through enums, the borrowchecker, pattern matching, the ? Operator, etc.
Maybe you all are way smarter than me, super possible, but I wouldn't expect much to translate between go and rust. I think some evidence for that is the blog post here...
Scala is a great language. And Rust definitely has noticeable influences from ML. But I’d say Rust is closer to C++ than it is to ML.
But, to be fair to you, I’ve not touched Rust in a couple of years so maybe my memory is fallible here?
I don't think it's a memory thing. The original rust compiler was written in OCAML. I think it's closer to an ML personally because of the strong focus on the type system rather than the chr* magic of c/c++.
Over the years c++ has been influenced to offer things people like from rust. So modern c++ looks a little more like rust. But older c++ really doesn't.
Similarly rusts approach to dynamic dispatch is more like OCAML than c++.
You can use rust and c++ for similar objectives though. Anyone can reduce two technical things until they are identical or expand them until they are completely different.
I think the most sober take is they are sufficiently different from one another.