Are they any close? Seems like they’ve been doing it for ages and they aren’t close.

Well, I’ve been a C/C++ dev for half of my career, I didn’t find Rust syntax ugly. Some things are better than others, but not a major departure from C/C++. ObjC is where ugly is at. And I even think swift is more ugly. In fact, I can’t find too many that are as close to C/C++ as Rust. As for logic… Well, I want to say you’ll get used to it, but for some things, it’s not true. Rust is a struggle. Whether it’s worth it, is your choice. I personally would take it over C++ any day.