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> fully dynamic
Well, no, it's SBCL. Common Lisp has support for types, but most compilers only use them for optimization, SBCL goes one step further and emits warnings when you mismatch types. And looking at the code, I can see lots of type declarations.
It's also interesting to note that the code does not seem to be using SBCL's new SIMD library*, so it could be sped up even more.
* <https://github.com/marcoheisig/sb-simd>, see the texinfo file for documentation.
> If we accept that Rust is indeed more difficult to learn than comparable systems programming languages
My problem is with "comparable systems programming languages". To me the only thing that fits there today is C++ and while a great many programming languages would be easier to learn than Rust, C++ is not one of them by a long shot.
I think the C++ Quiz https://cppquiz.org/ and the Rust Quiz https://dtolnay.github.io/rust-quiz/ illustrate handily. Neither of these languages is a walk in the park, but, notice they both have "Undefined behaviour" as a possible answer? Safe Rust doesn't actually have undefined behaviour, so you get to rule out one of the possibilities any time you don't see the "unsafe" keyword, which is in fact every time on the Rust Quiz. In C++ some of the quiz questions invoke UB, but good luck correctly guessing which ones.
