>>7
worse-is-better
Doesn't characterize Rust.
>>10
The type system is really good. I like ML's better but there is a tradeoff in this space. The closures aren't especially ruby-esque in any sense other than syntax.
>>16
WFM. If you really want to build it, try the release tarball. It eats about an hour of CPU time to build on a modern Intel so supply -j8 (or however many CPU threads you have) to make.