I don't code in Rust--and thereby might be expected to not know all of these patterns and want to have to learn fewer bits--and yet I agree with you. I feel like removing this "if let" variant would be similar to saying we don't need if statements as they are equivalent to a loop that ends in break. I actually even will say the if let is much easier to read as with the match I have to check why it is a match and verify it has the None case--similar to checking if a loop is really going to loop or if it always ends in break--whereas I can skip all that work if I see the "if".