There may be other things about Ruby that I disagree with, but this is probably my primary disagreement. It does make code more difficult to understand for exa

There may be other things about Ruby that I disagree with, but this is probably my primary disagreement. It does make code more difficult to understand for exactly the reason you mentioned, and furthermore it can sometimes be disallowed based on the rest of the expression (such that parens are required). In my own Ruby code, I often use parens when they are optional.