Everything is an expression. Including if statements. There is no need of such syntax abominations.

Bingo. Remember when you first first learned the ternary operator syntax? I recall thinking something along the lines of, "Wow, that's cryptic!"

    result = if condition then success else failure

Sure, but other coffee operations like x||=5 are also abominations. Brevity and purity are often at odds and the choices made by a language can be arbitrary.