This is what is putting me off the most of this, the syntax feels very unreadable for something that is meant for python, which has a very readable and open syntax, even typescript's sometimes messy typing is for the most part more readable than this

To provide some rationale, the '!' syntax distinguishes declarations from imperative constructs or effectful statements. You will see similar syntactic sugar in Haskell (do notation), F# (computation expressions), and probably others - they are often abstractions for specific monad-wrangling patterns, and won't look out of place for many in a more functional-style language.

Same, this just seems soooo very ugly imho