Since 1.0 Rust has added ability to use arrays larger than 32 elements. That's not bloat, that's a fix of an embarrassingly large TODO left in 1.0.

Rust added a new module system, which most people find easier to use than the original one. The new one technically does more, but these are things that everyone expected it to do anyway (e.g. in Rust 1.0 use of `std` in code worked only in some files, sometimes, because reasons. Now it works in every file, even though technically it's a more complicated name lookup).

Rust has added a new borrow checker. The implementation is waaay more complicated than the original scope-based one, but the result for the end user is that it mostly just works. In Rust 1.0 lots of borrowing didn't work for dumb reasons. You used to have to declare variables precisely in a reverse order of their destruction, or the code wouldn't compile. You often had to add extra {} around lines of code that mutated collections, because the simplistic borrow checker didn't understand when the mutation ended.

Even async, which itself is a big new feature, simplified networking code a lot. I've written a network service in Rust before async, and it was a pain, and run-time overhead, to deal with ownership in callback closures that required manual reference counting and didn't allow references. Async in Rust still has its quirks and limitations, but Rust 1.0 had all of them, and then some more.

Most importantly, Rust error messages have massively improved since 1.0. Things that used to be gotchas where people were getting completely stuck (such as needing .as_ref() on Option) are now pointed out by the compiler.

The compiler is now much faster, and generates better code. Rust has matured, and almost everything it has added since 1.0 should have been in 1.0.