At the very least, it sure looks a hell of a lot better. And using symbols and single-character abbreviations for types (in a dynamically typed language, mind y

At the very least, it sure looks a hell of a lot better. And using symbols and single-character abbreviations for types (in a dynamically typed language, mind you) and an overloaded % which has the extra syntactical rule that it only takes a single argument and so multiple replacements have to be done by throwing them all into a tuple is FAR more intuitive and readable than the way most languages do string formatting. Plus the alternatives, that require you bounce back and forth between the string and the variable it is replacing rather than read left to right the way humans are meant to read strings of text is a terrible design. Something as simple as string formatting should not rely on arcane and nuanced rules which are more or less arbitrary. You've all been programming in C-like languages for far too long to realize what a horrible design string formatting is. You can argue over "explicitness" all you want, the new way is easier to learn, easier to read, makes more intuitive sense, requires learning fewer rules, ad is close enough to the format string method that they work well together.