So, I agree that it would look slightly better if it were a macro. Having said that, is it worth the additional language complexity and opening a Pandora's box

So, I agree that it would look slightly better if it were a macro. Having said that, is it worth the additional language complexity and opening a Pandora's box of footguns? No. The idioms are not _ideal_, but I would not consider that to be dramatically painful, not would I even say it slows down development much. I think it's very difficult to improve idioms at this point without adding complexity in the language to the point where, IMO, it's no longer worth it. I think a strong point of Python vs other languages in the same class is that there's a well-defined limit, both as a community language and language capabilities, as to how much complexity and rope you're willing to give the user.