My guess is what's putting me off on unless is the baked in negative. If I look at a condition and imagine "if true" I can follow along, but "unless true" makes

My guess is what's putting me off on unless is the baked in negative. If I look at a condition and imagine "if true" I can follow along, but "unless true" makes me think "what does that even mean". Another issue might be that not everyone is a native english speaker (like me), and that we underestimate that thinking in boolean logic might not be the most natural thing in the world, and once you learn it, you usually learn it in a foreign language. Substituting "if !" with "unless" just throws a wrench in the patterns you're used to using. I disliked it as well in CoffeeScript. The use of else blocks is especially annoying, but even otherwise I don't like it. Some might say you shouldn't use it with an else block, but this is not realistic if you work in a team.