Readable is a matter of education. As a C++ programmer I've learned what {} means, and so that is more readable than begin/end which happens to not be the block symbol in any language I know well. Considering all the languages I know I've concluded that block symbols are important enough to be worth learning as a separate symbol (Looking at python where it is white space). Of course I can learn begin/end, but it isn't worth typing those extra letters of the word when something that common can be done in one.

Note too that {} graphically indicate the open/close in a way that begin/end is another reason not to like begin/end.

I've done plenty of C and C++, so I know what {} means, it's just that braces are harder to see, especially when there's a lot of them.

That's not necessarily the same thing though. Verbosity can obscure the information you're trying to gather from the code you're reading. A "can't see the forest for the trees"-kind deal.

I cannot see the source code for the documentation. This happens to me in so many cases. I work with a couple of codebases that have 90% documentation, 10% code. In Ada, code IS the documentation that also can be formally verified. It is wonderful.

I think I've heard "the code is self-documenting" a hundred times in my career and it hasn't been true once.

Yup, look at any driver in the Linux kernel.