Avoiding the main-thread panicking is mostly just a matter of not using .unwrap() and .expect().
String vs. &str can mostly be solved by generally using owned datatypes (String) for storing in structs and using references (&str) for passing into function parameters. It does still happen that you forget the & at times, but that's then trivial to solve (by just adding the &).
"temporary value dropped while borrowed" can generally be avoided by not passing references outside of your scope/function. You want to pass the owned value outside. Clone, if you have to.
"missing lifetime specifier" is also largely solved by not storing references in structs.

[–] kamikazerusher@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

The last two points are the kind of design advice I need to see. I’m probably so used to the C/C++ concept of passing by reference to prevent copies of complex data being generated that I forget how Rust’s definition of a reference is different.