Hmm playing off my own anecdote - I do not have a formal CS degree, but I ended up taking courses and reading a few of the typical books later on.
I think while my early experience biased me, the pain would have happened at one point or another eventually. I'd be surprised if the majority of web devs, and data science folks exploring rust wouldn't hit this problem at some point or another. As an example, one could easily run into this problem while writing an wiki,instagram, or twitter clone!
Sounds like we're opposing anecdotes; I do have a CS degree, but didn't try to start with data structures.
You may want to use something with those characteristics, sure, but that doesn't mean most users start by trying to implement, rather than use something existing.
I think while my early experience biased me, the pain would have happened at one point or another eventually. I'd be surprised if the majority of web devs, and data science folks exploring rust wouldn't hit this problem at some point or another. As an example, one could easily run into this problem while writing an wiki,instagram, or twitter clone!