I think you're talking about two separate things here, 1) Having to learn an entirely new syntax just to save on a few characters (it "decompresses" directly t

I think you're talking about two separate things here, 1) Having to learn an entirely new syntax just to save on a few characters (it "decompresses" directly to the original thing) 2) Explicitness vs implicitness/inference I wholly agree with you about #1 (superficial brevity isn't a very important goal and doesn't justify a whole new language), but #2 is much more of an "it depends"