The trailing if can sometimes be confusing in Ruby but the else clause is the thing that's just blatantly anti-intuitive about the Python syntax at issue. Ruby

The trailing if can sometimes be confusing in Ruby but the else clause is the thing that's just blatantly anti-intuitive about the Python syntax at issue. Ruby doesn't allow else there because that would be insane. Python chose the insane convoluted and confusing syntax over a well understood and accepted ternary operator.