Yeah for sure, the PERL influence is why I dislike Ruby. Makes it really hard to read if you haven't been doing it constantly.

Python's clean, obvious syntax is what drew me to it. They actively decide to not do things because it detracts from the cleanliness of the syntax. Very often, less is more. My biggest fear is Python might be forgetting this, which I see with the sort of things like := operator, etc.

God forbid we should have to familiarise ourselves with a language before using it.

God forbid things be intuitive.

Funny, because 99% of current regex libraries use Perl's regex extensions.