It hasn't been my job to work on Rust in for years now. And even then, it was not to "defend" Rust, but to write docs. I talk about it on my own time, and I have often advocated for change in Rust based on my conversations with users.
If you're being overly literal, yes, the <>s are needed here for this exact syntax. My point was not about this specific example, it's that these forms are equivalent, but some of them are syntactically simpler than others. The existence of redundant forms does not make the syntax illegitimate, or overly complex.
For this specific issue, if square brackets were used for generics, then something else would have to change for array indexing, and folks would be complaining that Rust doesn't do what every other language does here, which is its own problem.
A compiler could disambiguate, but the goal is to have parsing happen without knowing if A is a type or a variable. That is the inappropriate intertwining of parsing and semantics that languages are interested in getting away from, not continuing with.
Anyway, just to be clear: not liking the turbofish is fine, it's a subjective preference. But it's not an objective win, that's all I'm saying. And it's only one small corner of Rust's syntax, so I don't think that removing it would really alleviate the sorts of broad objections that the original parent was talking about.
If you're being overly literal, yes, the <>s are needed here for this exact syntax. My point was not about this specific example, it's that these forms are equivalent, but some of them are syntactically simpler than others. The existence of redundant forms does not make the syntax illegitimate, or overly complex.
For this specific issue, if square brackets were used for generics, then something else would have to change for array indexing, and folks would be complaining that Rust doesn't do what every other language does here, which is its own problem.