Ugh. Why braces ( { } )? That's the biggest tiny pain of using awk. It's an odd stretch for my fingers to type them and I have to look down to be sure I hit them right.
braces are pretty well built into my muscle memory at this point, but I actually agree with you aesthetically, I would prefer square brackets `fex [1:3,5]`. I presume it's because of awk <shrug>