> Direct read/write access to the environment as a map.

this is one of the things i like about Lua (which is listed there as a source of ideas)

i definitely don't like the choice of square brackets though, it's very ugly and hard to read. they should have stuck with parens

I do like the square brackets. They don't require holding down shift. And when you're writing the next killer app, and in the process, end up setting the world record for the longest string of subsequent ')' characters... that saves you a ton of stress on your pinky finger ;-)

Not if you re-map '(' and ')' to the '[' and ']' keys which, I think, is commonly done.

i use programmer dvorak :D all the brackets (except <>) are unshifted