[darrenf]

I'm reasonably sure you don't "embed a shell command in backquotes" all the time in Python (and I don't think this is pedantry; the specific ease of this syntax was the claimed benefit, not just the ability to shell out in some way).

Backticks were an alias of `repr` in Python 2.x:

    $ python2.7
    Python 2.7.6 (default, Nov 13 2018, 12:45:42) 
    [GCC 4.8.4] on linux2
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> foo="this is foo"
    >>> `foo`
    "'this is foo'"

And it went away in 3:

    $ python3
    Python 3.11.3 (main, Apr  5 2023, 15:52:25) [GCC 12.2.1 20230201] on linux
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> `ls`
      File "<stdin>", line 1
        `ls`
        ^
    SyntaxError: invalid syntax